Artöm Mazurchak

JTBD Interviews for a Product: From Guesswork to Clear Segments and Decisions

Mon, 02 Mar 2026 06:38:04 +0200

When a product grows, the team almost always ends up with different versions of reality. Marketing sees one audience, product sees another, support sees a third. Then we argue about segments based on intuition, the loudest voice wins the roadmap, and research stays in a folder and changes little.

In this case study, I show how I built one shared picture using LTV data, ABCD segmentation, and deep JTBD interviews. Then I turned the results into clear segments, customer language, and practical decisions for the product and communication. I also explain how I used AI live translation so I could talk to customers in their native language(Spanish), even when I do not speak it.

I do not share the company name and the exact numbers on purpose. In the screenshots, the data is fictional, but it still shows the right meaning.

Goal of the Research

Here is what I needed to do:

Stop inventing audience segments, and build them from real facts and real user voices.
Agree on the focus: who we serve best, and what value we deliver better than competitors.
Understand which customers actually keep the economics working.
Create artifacts that help other departments act and align with the needs of a particular segment.

At the start, we agreed that you can grow business metrics and beat competitors through the right segmentation.

My Pre-Interview Setup

For research like this, I build the process from scratch: first I align terms and expectations → then I collect facts → after that I write testable conclusions and turn them into concrete decisions with clear priorities. This removes subjectivity and makes it easier to pass the result between teams.

The project had four steps:

Aligning views inside the company.
Quantitative segmentation by LTV and ABCD segmentation.
Deep interviews in JTBD logic.
Writing clear customer jobs.

Step 1. Running an Internal Team Workshop Alignment

At the start, I ran a workshop where I set the JTBD frame:

People choose a product as a tool to solve a specific task. It is important to see the context, triggers, success criteria, trade-offs, and alternatives — not a list of desired features.

Then the team described its current view of segments: who they see as key, what they promise them, where the product magic is, and which jobs it covers. We compared the maps, captured the differences, and agreed: from here we test hypotheses with data and interviews, not with personal beliefs.

Step 2. Economics: LTV and ABCD segmentation

To make sure interviews did not turn into talks with random people, I started with the customer base. Using seven months of data, I split users by LTV ranges and calculated group size, average number of purchases, revenue, average LTV.

The analysis showed that customers with LTV 200–500 bring 56% of revenue. The goal of the research was to understand why they choose the product and what tasks / jobs they use it for, so we can learn how to attract and retain this group.

I applied the ABCD framework to the collected data.

This is where the first “cold shower” happened, and it made the discussion clear right away: a clearly defined share of LTV customers brought most of the revenue. That gave the research an honest focus. We wanted to understand:

who these people are;
why they choose us;
how to scale this success without drowning in endless service for low-value customers.

Step 3. In-Depth Customer Interviews to Identify Segment Patterns

The goal of the interviews was to understand why the client chose our product:

what happened before the purchase;
what became the trigger;
what options they compared;
where they hesitated;
when the feeling appeared: “aha, this works”;
how the customer defines success.

In each session, I captured the profile, trigger, aha moment, problems, customer jobs, and signals of disappointment. At the same time, I collected live quotes: the phrases people use to describe their goal and progress. Later, this language works great in marketing, onboarding, and product messaging.

I ran the interviews in Google Meet, and I recorded and transcribed them with Loom. Some conversations were in Spanish: I used a new Google AI service that does live, two-way translation in real time from Spanish to English and back.

An example interview where I talk to a customer from Spain without speaking Spanish. In the video, you can see how an AI-based two-way translator works.

Timing made one thing clear fast: 90 minutes gives better quality than 60. People have time to move past general phrases and get to the real reasons and trade-offs.

I planned to do 25 interviews. But by the 20th, I saw that the key motives and conflicts were repeating — so I stopped earlier.

In total, I did 23 interviews: 16 in German and 7 in Spanish. I captured thoughts and conclusions from each session on an online board — in the end, it became a full knowledge base.

Step 4. Defining Three Key Segments and Their Qualification Criteria

After the interviews, I built the segmentation so it works in real life. Not abstract portraits, but criteria that help the team confidently assign a customer to a group and understand how to work with them. I looked at:

goals and motivation;
risk attitude;
experience;
discipline;
routines and rituals;
learning and decision-making styles.

This is how three segments appeared, with different motives. Each has its own entry triggers, its own aha moment, and its own criteria for what is valuable.

Inside the segments, I saw repeating patterns: how people describe the goal, how they measure results, and which limits they see as critical.I put them into a separate block so other departments could better understand what our clients think about and how they make decisions.

Another artifact was a matrix of selection criteria and reasons why some customers choose competitors. It connected the customer voice with the market picture and helped us define clear points of comparison across segments.

How I made the results accessible to the whole company

One typical research risk is that knowledge stays with the researcher and dies when the context changes. To avoid that, I built an internal AI agent based on the project materials: transcripts, tagging, insights, and also external sources. Teams could ask questions and get answers grounded in real interviews and quotes, including in different languages.

This sharply increased the visibility of the knowledge portfolio: product, marketing, and support started to speak the same language and return to the source data faster when decisions were disputed.

Simulation game: “How will AI develop over the next 5 years?”

Mon, 02 Mar 2026 06:36:07 +0200

At the weekend, we spent two days on a simulation all about how AI might evolve over the next five years. There were 36 players involved. The game itself is a test and workout for skills like leadership, dealing with uncertainty, negotiation, building coalitions and cascading teamwork. Last year, I took part in a similar simulation, but that one focused on a geopolitical conflict.

Here’s how the game worked

Everyone was split into teams, each representing a key player in the market:

Established IT leaders – companies like Google, Microsoft, Meta and Alibaba;
AI startups – like Anthropic and OpenAI;
Chipmakers – companies like IBM and Nvidia;
Venture investors -GP and Standard Investments;
Conglomerate – X, led by Musk;
Regulators, the press and the courts.

35 people were split into teams and each person got assigned a role with details like personal goals, company status, industry position, team relationships, company ownership percentages, etc.

Each team member had their own “stats” like the number of people on their team, computing power, budget, accounts receivable and more.

There were 5 rounds, each lasting about an hour and a half. You could do pretty much anything: lure talent away from other companies, sue someone or get regulators involved, raise funds to build new factories to boost computing power. Any move was allowed, but moderators, the court or regulators could step in and veto an action.

At the end of each round, all the agreements made were handed over to the moderator, who compiled the results into a spreadsheet for each company. The spreadsheet tracked key stats that changed during the round, covering everything from team size to available cash.

The main goal for each team was to reach singularity, they used a Scrabble-like mechanic for that. At the end of each round teams got letter tiles, the number of letters depended on team size and computing power. But the exact formula of how letters were awarded was a secret, known only to the organizers and it wasn’t a straightforward calculation.

Post-game takeaways

1. The role you got is just a formality.
My role was a team lead at a company like OpenAI, not a top position. When I started negotiating with other teams, they asked what my position was and if I could make decisions. But I explained I was there representing the team and my role didn’t really matter. Very good. When it came time to run for president, I thought, there are already bigger names in the game, like Musk, so why even bother? Roles are just labels, both in the game and in real life. But it’s easy to use them as an excuse.

2. Always lead, always.
At the start of the game, we spent way too much time explaining what everyone planned to do. But as soon as we nailed down a clear vision of the goal and just got moving. Coming in with a plan and sharing it with the team really helped. I think the long talks happened because people were afraid to work with other teams and didn’t want to take responsibility alone. They wanted to share it so no one felt fully in charge.

3.If you don’t get the result you want, don’t overthink it – keep going.
When my or the team’s actions didn’t pay off, I got caught up in my emotions. But a few times when I pushed through and made an extra effort, things surprisingly turned out well. I’m more convinced than ever that keeping a cool head gets you results faster.

4. Look at your social connections before you start and use them.
At the start of the game only three teams had computing power. The first two teams I asked didn’t want to work with me. But the third team had someone I already knew and they agreed to cooperate. I’m sure the trust we built before the game helped a lot. You should use this kind of trust and manage it, both in the game and in real life.

5. Keep the whole game in mind while working on the current round.
It’s normal to want quick, predictable results. But if you only focus on the short term, your options get limited. When you plan for the long game, looking ahead several rounds, you open up more possibilities and better chances to succeed. For example, we started building a coalition in the first round and didn’t finish it until the third, but that gave us a lead over the other teams.

6. When things are uncertain, focus on finding opportunities.
In uncertain situations with lots of different interests, it’s easy to just stick to your own goals – your role makes them clear and it feels simpler that way. But if you pause for a second, you’ll see everyone starts like that and the only way to win is by working together. So from the very beginning, look for chances to boost both your position and the other team’s. In the end, the team that began building a coalition right from round one won.

7. First, get the context – then take action, but don’t take too long.
The roles and rules are detailed and you get all the info just before the game starts, so it’s impossible to understand everything right away. My team spent time trying to figure it all out, but we ended up talking too much and wasting time we could use to do something. You learn the context by engaging with others, not by staying stuck in your own little world.

8. Keep taking action until you get a confirmed result.
When several teams are involved in a deal, it can feel like you’ve already agreed and can move on to the next step. But deals have fallen apart more than once right at the signing. So until the agreement is actually signed, don’t get distracted, follow through all the way to the end.

9. Split up the responsibilities.
More than once, our whole team went to negotiate with another group, all of us listening at the same time, which wasn’t very efficient. In the game, just like in real life, there are lots of tasks and layers to handle. To work better, it’s smarter to divide the responsibilities and work on things at the same time. On the second day we did that and our team got way more efficient.

10. Stay in sync and make sure everyone’s on the same page.
When signing some deals, it turned out that key people had different ideas about how things should work and that ended up breaking the deal. The main points and strategy need to be clearly explained from the beginning.

Thanks to Marat Atnashev, Timur Atnashev and their team for organizing the game.

How venture studios help big companies survive the AI era

Thu, 26 Feb 2026 06:43:00 +0200

A venture studio is an organization focused on building and scaling startups. Unlike accelerators, studios are typically specialized in a specific industry and offer deep operational support to the startups they launch.

Sometimes, large corporations launch internal venture studios. The biggest challenge they’re trying to solve is “the innovator’s dilemma”. This concept, described by Clayton, explains how big companies often miss out on new markets and breakthrough technologies because they’re too focused on protecting their current market share. And right now, many of those breakthrough technologies are connected with AI.

Venture studios are also often founded by serial entrepreneurs with deep expertise in a particular vertical. Their experience gives them an edge in selecting the right projects to launch and in providing the kind of hands-on support startups need to succeed in that specific field.

Take, for example, companies that made traditional hard disk drives. When SSDs first hit the market, they were expensive and the demand was small. But as costs dropped and the market exploded, many HDD makers who failed to invest in SSD technology early enough went out of business. Classic case of “the innovator’s dilemma” in action.

Key Traits of a Venture Studio

1. Industry Specialization

One major trait of venture studios is their focus on a single domain like health, finance, developer tools, etc. Specialization makes it easier to choose which startups to launch and how to support them. Startups within the same vertical tend to face similar challenges, so operational help is more relevant and effective.

Moreover, investing in specific infrastructure costs less than trying to cover multiple verticals at once. Once a few startups are up and running, they can share learnings, data and network. That speeds up experimentation and improves decision-making across the board.

A great example is Askona, a company that makes sleep products, launched a venture studio focused on wellness and recovery. Every startup in that studio benefited from Askona’s deep knowledge in the field.

2. Building Repeatable Processes

Industry focus gives studios clarity on what phases a startup goes through and that helps build the right infrastructure to guide teams through each stage. Studios create best practices, frameworks and roadmaps to help startups move faster.

At this point, it’s all about finding the balance between freedom and structure. Founders need room to think like entrepreneurs, take risks and move fast. At the same time, proven processes help tackle the common challenges every startup faces more efficiently. The studio’s operational support should guide the direction, not hand out a strict playbook.

That support often includes:
Operational support typically includes:
A. Identifying a big enough market and applying the right evaluation methods
B. Structuring the idea discovery process for future projects
C. Selecting key metrics and developing strategies to move them
D. Providing resources for hiring, marketing, product expertise and CustDev.

3. Fail Really—REALLY Fast

Having established processes in place allows startups to move faster from the very beginning. Unlike independent startups, founders inside a venture studio don’t have to constantly worry about fundraising, they can stay focused on building and growing the company.

So, if you define clear target metrics for each stage of a startup’s development, you can quickly see whether the project is on track to find PMF. If the startup doesn’t hit its targets, it’s easier to shut it down and move on. So venture studios bring both discipline and speed to startup development.

4. Skin in the Game

One of the core risks Clayton highlights in The Innovator’s Dilemma is what happened when large companies set up R&D centers (the early predecessors of today’s venture studios). A common mistake was staffing those centers with teams from the parent company. Along with their skills, they brought the mindset and values of an established corporate environment rather than an entrepreneurial one. And that mindset crushed breakthrough ideas before they had a chance to grow.

Venture studios should feel like startups. The team needs real entrepreneurial spirit. Functionally, that means owning and executing on a P&L. Emotionally, it means:
A. The mission should feel like a life’s calling, something you’d be proud to tell your kids about.
B. Your persistence, ability to shape strategy, flexibility and willingness to take risks can make or break everything. It’s about taking the kind of ownership Nassim Taleb calls having “skin in the game”.

The same goes for startup founders in a venture studio. More often than not, they’re entrepreneurs, not corporate execs. And that entrepreneurial mindset is key.

I once joined a long discussion about how to build effective venture studios. Someone suggested that companies could find people with entrepreneurial mindsets within their own ranks to lead startups. But we agreed that the very traits that made those people successful in a corporate setting might hold them back when launching something from scratch. So, it’s better to build teams with real entrepreneurs at the core.

Summary

Venture studios give big, established companies a way to stay ahead in a fast-changing market.
Industry specialization helps startups get the exact support they need.
Shared infrastructure and repeatable processes speed up growth and learning.
Studios build knowledge around key success metrics, making it easier to decide when to double down or walk away.
And finally, the entrepreneurial culture within venture studios is critical. Without that, even the best ideas won’t make it past the starting line.

AI’s Fourth Industrial Revolution: Why Old Product Playbooks Fail

Sat, 21 Feb 2026 14:43:55 +0200

We’re living through a unique moment: the fourth industrial revolution, under the AI flag. Humanity has already gone through three industrial revolutions, and the worries people feel now aren’t new. How should we think so we stop worrying and, using what we know about past shifts, turn this moment to our advantage?

Sam Altman often says in his talks: “we’ll have to rethink and change how organizations and society function.” Let’s unpack what that means.

Ford’s assembly line: a template for change

Let’s look at a past example of how to act to seize the moment. Before Ford’s assembly line, one worker assembled the entire car, doing many different operations.

With Ford’s moving line, the process was rebuilt: the line moved, and each worker did one or two operations — productivity increased eightfold.

But what did people think about first, before they started building Ford’s assembly line? A change like that required huge investments: rebuilding production from scratch, retraining people with new skills, and setting new management standards.

They started with the idea of a new organization design scheme:

Redefining the operations in the plant;
Reorganizing communication between workers;
Setting new roles for each team member.

Changing the organization design scheme

In the end, they defined a organization design scheme. From this comes an important point:

The core feature of any industrial revolution is a organization design scheme.

These schemes aren’t “written in the sky” or hidden in secret books. In every industrial revolution, a specific group of people define the new scheme. They set a new norm, and from that norm new products were conceived.

Like any cultural change, a new norm takes time to be accepted by society. The key takeaway: first you establish the scheme, and only then do you start thinking about products.

From this follows another point:
fast product success = product failure.

A fast win usually means the product fit into the old organization design scheme. Great products take time to mature. But the companies that set the new norm gain an undeniable advantage for the next decades and, in the end, win the competition.

How we work today

Here’s, schematically, how work typically runs in a product company today. Suppose John takes on a task. John might be a product manager, a designer, or a project manager — that detail doesn’t matter.

When John starts, he tries to understand the task and collects context:

He understands the company’s domain to some extent and knows the constraints of his department and his specific role.
He gathers information about the external context — competitors and customers.
He talks to the internal team to understand the task better.

Eventually, John forms a working picture of the task’s context. It’s incomplete, but good enough to start. His time for gathering context is limited: the context remains incomplete, yet he needs to proceed.

How we’ll work tomorrow

In the new scheme, John has an agent that:

Remembers all relevant context: company constraints and plans; the department’s work and ideas; information tied to his role.
Exists not only for John but also on the side of internal teams, customers, and competitors.
Changes how we communicate: from “human–human” toward protocol-like human–agent and agent–agent interactions.

Let’s use this scheme to see how product work could evolve.

Product example

To see what kinds of products emerge from the new scheme, focus on the part where John used to “collect context.” We interview people who build products, analyze their work, and how their activities are set up today.

The analysis shows: up to 60% of their time goes to gathering task context — and even then the context stays incomplete. From here comes a product idea: build a domain AI assistant for a specific person, in a specific department, for a company in a specific domain. The goal is to radically increase the speed and quality of decisions.

How the assistant works:

It has access to role-relevant sources (docs, task tracker, knowledge base).
It sees context gaps and points out what’s missing.
It finds relevant past discussions (e. g., a Slack thread from six months ago) and routes to the knowledge holders.
It takes into account practices of direct and indirect competitors.
It acts within company policies and constraints.

Result: a dramatic productivity boost — less time searching, fuller context, faster and better decisions.

The AI assistant is just an illustration of how to derive a product from the scheme.

An orchestra of products from one scheme

We explored only one spot in the scheme that led to one product. But the scheme reveals more places where opportunities for new products appear:

Agents on the side of customers and competitors;
Agents on the side of internal teams;
Products that enable human–agent and agent–agent communication.

When a company starts from the scheme, it can create several interlinked solutions at once. The scheme lets you build an orchestra of products that amplify each other.

A few books that explain how to think systemically about this topic are Idealized Design by Russell Ackoff and Georgy Shchedrovitsky’s Organizational-Managerial Thinking.

Takeaways:

We’re in the fourth industrial revolution, and we must build products differently than in the last 100 years.
First define a new organization design scheme — then think about products.
Fast product success = product failure: a fast win means the product plugged into the old organization design scheme.
A new organization design scheme lets you invent several mutually reinforcing products.

This post is also available as a video presentation.

Strategy Session for Products: Building a 1–5 Year Plan to Hit Goals or Design a New Future

Sun, 15 Feb 2026 06:55:15 +0200

Methodologist Georgy Shchedrovitsky developed a way to organize a team’s thinking and actions so it can deliver large, complex projects. I built my strategy session format on these principles. In this article, I explain how the session works and what a company gets at the end.

Why a strategy session matters — and what happens there

To work on big projects, you first need to pause and design the future. If you only follow trends, the project may either never happen — or it will happen with major difficulties and not in the form you originally planned.

The reason is simple: we’re standing at the edge of a new industrial revolution. Old rules stop working, and new rules are still being created. The winners are the projects that shape those rules. Strategy sessions are where teams do exactly that.

Most teams are good at day-to-day execution and quick results. But sometimes there is no shared understanding of where the company is going:

what Point A looks like today and what future the company wants;
what context the company will operate in — and whether it plans to influence it;
what each department must do to reach Point B.

Here is how one department’s scheme looks: a person plays a specific role inside the department. The department operates in a certain context. Tasks move the department toward it goal.

And here’s what teamwork sometimes looks like: each department is on its own, with its own goals and its own way to reach them.

But it should look different: the team has one shared goal. Everyone moves toward it in sync and understands what is expected from them at any moment. To see this goal clearly, people need to take a reflective position — step back and look at their work from the outside.

So what’s the real difference between these two pictures? In the “right” one, at Point A the team first builds a shared view of:

the single context of the company;
how departments connect and communicate to each other;
what roles people play inside departments.

Only then does everyone start to shape Point B — and design the context they want to end up in.

Planning the future: small company vs. big company

The approach differs depending on how many resources you have.

A product with limited resources	A product with a lot of resources
Often follows external trends. Treats the existing context as the “rules of the game” for the next year.	Can hold a position longer and set the context for the whole market. Often builds strategy for 3–5–10 year.

Take Elon Musk’s Neuralink: a chip implanted in the head that lets you control a computer with your thoughts. It has been tested on paralyzed people — and it works. It’s possible that in 10, 20, or 30 years many of us will use such chips. Musk is shaping the context we may all live in.

A key step: define Point A metrics through a company funnel

An important part of the session is to define your current metrics at Point A. The easiest way is a shared company funnel, where each conversion is owned by a specific department. Even if the company has no historical data, you can still assume a funnel to make the goal measurable.

Seeing the company as a funnel helps you consistently generate projects that improve conversion at each level. This is a very simplified version — in reality, the funnel is much bigger.

When the funnel is ready, you can focus on three things:

1. Create a list of projects that can significantly improve conversion between stages and key metrics. These are not just operational tasks — they are new initiatives. For example: a new client acquisition approach, a new market segment, a new process.

Projects are designed for specific funnel stages. Moving stage by stage, we:

make sure we covered all key parts of the business, which helps us generate more ideas;
discuss ideas tied to a specific stage, not in general terms;
we’ll rank the projects and focus on the ones most likely to benefit the company.

2. Check if the projects are good enough to reach the strategic goal. Maybe you need a fundamental shift and must rethink how the system works.

Example: when I built an office rental service, we started with an ad-based model. At some point, we realized it couldn’t scale results fast enough. We created a new approach that didn’t exist in the market: we began closing brokerage deals remotely. The company increased revenue 5x in two years.

3. Define success metrics. Founders might name top-level numbers — revenue, market share, etc. Then the team builds the funnel from the bottom up and clarifies how each department will move toward the goal.

Only after the ideal outcome is defined can we move on to a real plan and concrete steps. It answers one question: “What exactly do we need to do to get to point B?”

How Shchedrovitsky’s approach turns strategy into results

The approach fits into four steps.

Step 0. Build a map for a new project

If you already found your market, go to the next step. But if you’re planning a big, long project (3–5 years), first map it and answer key questions:

What future does the organization want to live in, and how do you see it?
Can the organization design that future?
How does the organization act, and what is its role?
How does the organization deliver value — what problem does it solve?

Step 1. Think of your project as a funnel

Map the business as a funnel, align on one North Star Metric so everyone shares a clear view of what matters most.

Step 2. Each department prepares in advance

Each department:

describes the context, object, and role of key people in deparment;
fills in Point A data for its part of the funnel;
prepares a plan with obvious solutions to save time during group discussion.

Step 3. Run a shared meeting

First you set the overall frame for the session. Then each department presents its Point A and Point B.

Then the team describes the projects at a high level so everyone understands their purpose and value in the same way. At this stage, we don’t go into details, so we don’t spend too much time discussing one idea. During other teams’ presentations, people add important facts and clarifications, and if you already have a working business model, this kind of discussion usually takes about 95% of the whole strategy session. If you’re just starting out, you’ll spend more time defining point B.

In the end, you get a table of potential projects for each department.

Six principles and a quick glossary

Before we go into each principle, let’s align on terms.

Imagine a factory line. Today it is assembled as-is — that’s Point A. In a year, it should run faster and more stable — that’s Point B. Each machine has an input, output, and a handover point. If you mix up operations, the line stops. If you set the handover and order correctly, speed and quality grow.

Teams work the same way: we take work from neighbors, do our part, hand it over — and we can see where effect is lost on the path from Point A to Point B. Sometimes you just need better handover discipline. Sometimes you need to rebuild part of the “line” so the move to Point B can really start.

Term	Definition	Example
Points A and B	A is the current state; B is the desired state.	Average client launch time is 120 days (A). Target is 90 (B). The team forecasts, rebuilds the process, and agrees on cross-team projects to hit the goal.
Context	The situation in which the company’s activity unfolds.	Sales and marketing saw the situation differently. After discussing the shared context, they built a fuller picture of where the company stands and how to use trends.
Person	A person’s role inside the organization, visible as a network of connections in real work.	The marketing head could invent and test new acquisition methods, but had no time because of operations. After defining their Point A and Point B, the team created a project to reorganize that person’s work.
Reflective position	An “above the action” position: stepping out of your role, context and organisation.	Marketing takes traffic and outputs qualified leads → sales takes leads and outputs a service package → the client starts using the product.
Action position	Participants come ready to take responsibility for execution, not just dream or complain.	“Let’s build an AI support bot: it can solve 60% of tasks while keeping NPS as high as with humans support. I know how to start.”
Self-movement	Internal activity and motion of a system or person. Management is only possible when there is self-movement.	Anton is interested in AI and product and has suggested ideas. He may be ready to lead a project that matches his interests.
Management	Influencing a moving object by using its own movement to reach the organization’s goal.	We choose a project and check it supports the goal. Knowing the trajectory of self-movement, we adjust course so the project doesn’t drift away.
Work assembly	How scattered tasks become one flow from request to result.	Request → qualification → demo → proposal → contract → launch, with named owners.
Schematization	Putting the situation on a board as a scheme. It helps build a shared language: key elements, connections, and how the scheme links to the goal.	The goal was higher margins. When the acquisition system was mapped, it became clear current channels can’t deliver clients at the needed cost. The team invented a new acquisition method.
Organization / object	Describing how elements are assembled into a whole and what connections bind them.	In sales, a Business Developer did partners + closing + client support. Two problems: losing clients when BD quits; hard to measure BD efficiency. After analysis, the team split roles: SDR (attraction), BD (signing), Accounting (relationship growth).
Owner	The person accountable for a specific area and its metric.	Sales lead owns qualification.

Principle 1. The future isn’t something that happens — it’s made from the position you choose to take

Core idea. You don’t need to guess the future — you can build it. To do that, you take and hold a position to “pull” the market into the reality you want (think Nike and sports culture, or Amazon and one-day delivery). The team chooses Point B and acts instead of chasing trends. This matters even more in the AI era, where new norms are still being set — and the future belongs to those who set them.

Business questions it answers

What position do we hold so the desired future becomes real?
What external conditions can we use to our advantage?
What opportunities and projects must we create to “bring” the future closer?
What should we refuse to avoid chasing hype?

How it works in the session

Fix Point A and construct Point B.
Map key elements of the future reality: the company’s core purpose, the rules of the game, critical assumptions.
Turn the position into strategic “yes/no” choices and a set of key projects.
Align departments into one movement toward Point B.

Impact

The team stops chasing trends and starts setting new rules in its niche.
Functions align into one trajectory, reducing waste.
Focused action speeds up results.

Principle 2. Reflection is a position “above” action

Core idea. Stepping above operations lets you see the activity map, the gaps between Point A actions and Point B goals — and then build a focused plan.

Business questions

Are we doing the wrong things right now? What is truly priority?
Which processes and projects are “weeds” that must be removed?
Which market signals matter — and what should we ignore to stay on course?

How it works

Set the time horizon: how far ahead you plan.
Look at the company across organization, people, and context. Fix Points A and B across these layers.
Identify gaps and form projects needed to close them.

Impact

Better prioritization, less operational noise.
Less wasted time and money; the Point B vector stays clear.
Plans become concrete and doable.

Principle 3. You can manage only what is already moving

Core idea. Any project is based on self-movement. Management is trajectory correction — you can’t manage something static. In the session, we look at how departments and leaders actually move: where initiatives go, what motives drive them, and where movement needs adjustment.

Management is only possible when something is moving—only then can we correct its direction.

Business questions

Where is the self-movement of each department and key person directed?
Which projects steer that movement — and do they lead to company goals?
What must be tuned or replaced so movement goes the right way?

How it works

Analyze current and desired positions, review ongoing initiatives, plan new ones.
Build projects that set the right direction frame.
Agree what self-movement matches Point B, and what must change.

Impact

You find inertia and “dead zones” faster and focus efforts where there is real traction.
Teams become more proactive and autonomous.
If a department’s trajectory conflicts with Point B, it becomes clear where adjustments are needed.

Principle 4. Schematization moves the situation to the board — so reality becomes clear.

Core idea. A shared picture is born on a scheme. A scheme forces you to be precise and fix the essence without long speeches. That reduces misinterpretation and speeds up alignment.

Business questions

What is the company’s core position — and what reality are we building on purpose?
– Where is it a task (solvable inside the current structure) vs. a problem (needs structural change)?
If we can describe Point B, why aren’t we there yet?
Which dependencies between functions are critical? What must be rebuilt from scratch?
How do we measure success, and what are the decision boundaries and rules?

How it works

Put the situation on the board: objects, connections, forces, shared terms.
Add rules, constraints, critical assumptions; mark disputed areas.

Impact

One shared meaning and “rules of the game,” fewer conflicts.
Faster decisions, cheaper coordination.
Clearer prioritization: resources go to key elements, not noise.
Less rework: the scheme becomes a reference for process and communication design.
More stability in turbulence: the scheme is an anchor for adjustments.

Principle 5. View the situation in layers — context, organization, person

Core idea. A situation has multiple layers. To manage it, you must see context, the organization’s structure, and real people with their self-movement — and connect these layers to one goal.

Business questions

Which contextual limits and opportunities define the playing field?
How are processes, roles, and resources built — and do they match Point B?
Where do gaps between layers appear?
Which changes in one layer will create the biggest effect in others?

How it works

For each department, create a 3-column table: Points A and B for context, organization, person.
Identify gaps and causes; mark contradictions and hidden assumptions.
Form projects that stitch layers together (rules, processes, roles, incentives). Decide what must be rebuilt from scratch.
Set local KPIs/OKR per layer and cross-layer metrics (funnel conversions).

Impact

Better cross-functional initiatives, because teams understand each other through joint discussion.
Stronger ownership of goals: people see their impact on the whole.
Faster root-cause discovery (not just symptoms).
Management becomes systemic, not firefighting.

Principle 6. Company activity exists on four levels: operations, projects, programs, ideas

Core idea. Any activity stands on the level of ideas. Ideas define what we do, why, and why it matters. Major results and key changes are not achieved at the operational level. So in a strategy session, we work at least at the project level — ideally at the program level.

Business questions

At what level are we solving the problem now — and why are we stuck there?
What must move from operations to project or program level to create a breakthrough?
Where do we lack ideas or a conceptual frame for meaningful decisions?
How do we measure progress and effect at each level — alone and together?
Which decisions fail because levels are mixed up, and how do we fix it?

How it works

Introduce shared terminology for levels and label all initiatives.
Review the portfolio: mark the current and target level for each initiative.
Identify program tracks for 6–18 months with owners and shared metrics.

Impact

Operations stop eating strategy; focus stays on what matters.
Nonlinear shifts appear through program effects and capability building.
A shared mission and strategic narrative form.
Resource planning improves across time horizons and decision levels.
The organization learns faster: good solutions become standardized and scaled.

How the strategy session runs

Before the session: departments prepare materials

Each department creates a presentation where it:

describes its activity;
explains its part of the funnel;
shows which projects were done and how they changed the funnel.

For companies launching a new project with a long planning horizon, the main goal at this stage is to agree what will be done at all. Only then does it make sense to discuss preparation in detail.

During the session: two offline days

Early start. One big wall for schemes and flipcharts. A screen for presentations. We work in blocks with short pauses to process.

Day 1: build a shared picture. Each department shows Point A, Point B, and its plan. Other teams add their understanding and propose projects.

Day 2: continue presentations and project discussion. At the end, we summarize: everyone can share impressions and highlight projects they believe are strategically critical.

After the session: build an open backlog and align plans

Each department builds an open backlog and prioritizes projects. Then there is a setup meeting: each team presents its plan for the next quarter and the projects it will deliver.

After the quarter ends, you run another meeting to review the results:

check how the department’s funnel metrics changed;
see blockers and delivery speed for each department;
if new projects appeared during the quarter, assign priorities and, if needed, take them into work;
each department builds the next quarter plan.

What you will have after the session

A single movement map: how it is now → how it should be.
A target scheme of how the company should be structured.
One prioritized list of tasks with owners and metrics.

How I can help your team

For the past several years, I’ve been systematically studying the work of Russell Ackoff and Georgy Shchedrovitsky. I earned an MBA and studied at Stanford and Berkeley. I’ve been applying this foundation in practice for the last seven years, facilitating strategic sessions for both B2B and B2C projects. A typical group ranges from five to forty participants.

If the approach described in the article resonates with you, you can run a strategy session on your own—this page includes everything you need. If you’d like support, I’m ready to guide you step by step.

Ethnographic journey through China

Sat, 14 Feb 2026 15:57:06 +0200

In September, three of my classmates from Skolkovo – M., K. and R. and I went on a trip through six cities in China: Guangzhou → Shenzhen → Xiamen → Shanghai → Hangzhou → Beijing. The whole trip was thoughtfully organized by M. She was the first Chinese student to graduate from the Skolkovo MBA program in fall 2019, and earlier this spring she moved back home after spending five years working in Russia.

It’s worth mentioning that back in December, we had an off-site Skolkovo module in Hong Kong at HKUST – the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. Their business school is ranked #1 in the world for EMBA programs by the Financial Times. As part of the program, we had lectures on China’s economic development to help us better understand the local business landscape, visited several Hong Kong-based companies and spent one day in Shenzhen. Hong Kong really made an impression of a modern city full of massive skyscrapers, lines outside Gucci stores and Teslas used as taxis. That day trip to Shenzhen in December was way too short to get any real sense of mainland China.

In my mind, that quick trip didn’t really change my impression of mainland China as I still pictured it as one giant factory that supplies the whole world. At the time, I saw Hong Kong and Shenzhen as exceptions to the rule. Turns out, I couldn’t have been more wrong.

This new trip completely blew me away, I had no idea what was really going on in China. Before my first visit to the US, I had some expectations and a mental image of the country. But with China, it was all pretty vague, mostly formal descriptions and growth charts from HKUST.

What surprised me

1.Each city we visited had its own clear goal or strategy and was seriously working toward it. In some places, that led to clusters of companies that supported each other. For example, Shenzhen is a big tech hub. A bunch of hardware companies are based in the same area. If one company is building a new device, they can just cross the street to talk to parts suppliers. That makes everything faster and more efficient.

2. The cities are growing at an incredible pace. That means constant construction, new road and major updates to city infrastructure. For example, Beijing had 13.5 million people in 2000 and by 2015 it had grown to 21.7 million. And it’s not just about size, they’re also putting real effort into the urban environment. In some residential neighborhoods you’ll see trash bins made to look like wood. Or Shanghai – there’s a stunning waterfront with beautiful landscaping and thoughtful little details, like tiny crow sculptures built into the railings along the river.

The waterfront in Shanghai

3. GDP growth has been around 7% in recent years, while mortgage rates are at 4%. Inflation in 2018 was just 2.1%. Numbers like that push people to buy property, which has driven up the price per square meter, even in second-tier cities to around $15 500. There’s also a special program for Chinese citizens: every month, 12% of your salary automatically goes into a fund that can only be used to buy real estate and your employer adds up to another 12% on top of that. As a result, many people own apartments they don’t live in, they rent them out instead, which keeps rental prices low. For example, a two-story apartment in Xiamen with a large master bedroom, a kids’ room, two bathrooms and a huge kitchen-living area with a bay view can go for just 50,000 rubles a month. That said, M. mentioned she thinks the real estate market is a bubble.

4. The government plays a major role in business and interestingly, it often feels like a positive one. For example, entire cities or regions will publicly lay out their development strategies, so it’s clear what they’re aiming for and what kind of projects they want to attract. That gives people a sense of direction where to apply, how to get involved and what the bigger picture is. On top of that, the government creates large-scale strategic programs, builds processes around them and allocates real funding. One example: a region might set a goal to bring in up to a million entrepreneurs, scientists, and top-tier professionals either from abroad or among Chinese citizens living overseas by 2025, with dedicated funding to support that goal.

5. Electric cars are everywhere in big cities, I got the impression that every fifth car was electric. You can spot them by their green license plates, while gas-powered ones have blue plates. Officially, the stats say it’s more like one in ten, but still they’re hard to miss. There are also tons of scooters on the streets and they’re all battery-powered. You walk around and there’s no smell of gasoline, it’s kind of amazing.

6. There are so many services built into WeChat. It’s technically a messenger, but really it’s a whole ecosystem. Even Airbnb isn’t just a separate app, it also works as a mini-app inside WeChat. We needed SIM cards, so M. sent a request and 15 minutes later a guy showed up on a bike and delivered them. Someone cracked their phone screen, we ordered a repair through WeChat and an hour later a technician found us at a tech expo, fixed the screen in 15 minutes and that was it. At a regular (not fast food!) restaurant, we scanned a QR code at the table, picked our dishes, paid through the app and the waiter brought everything over. M. said we were also using Meituan a lot, it’s kind of like an upgraded TripAdvisor for ordering services. One more thing, there’s almost no outdoor ads on the streets, but there’s tons of ads inside WeChat.

Mobile service for SIM card delivery and screen repair

7. We mostly traveled between cities by train. The high-speed trains we took reached up to 250 km/h and some can go as fast as 400 km/h. The rail network is huge and the stations are massive. The trains look a lot like the Sapsan back in Russia, but with some nice touches. Each seat has a built-in power outlet and there’s a windowsill wide enough to hold a cup of coffee. All the seats face the direction of travel and when the train is about to head back the other way, a staff member simply turns all the rows around to face forward again.

The process of turning the seats to face the direction of travel

8. There’s a huge focus on children’s education. There are tons of clubs and programs for kids and teens to keep learning outside of school. In one mall, we saw a space of about 500 square meters turned into an education center, the whole area was divided into small cubicles, each with a table and two chairs. Kids come there after school for one-on-one tutoring, moving from cubicle to cubicle depending on the subject. One reason behind this is that many Chinese families feel the growing pressure of competition and that’s pushing them to invest heavily in education.

9. Tea culture is huge. It’s hard to find a Chinese person without a thermos of tea in hand. Tea shops are super popular, they look a lot like Starbucks, but instead of coffee, they serve tea in all kinds of flavors with different toppings. In Hangzhou, we went to one of these places and tried to order at the counter, only to be told the wait time was an hour and a half! And the shop didn’t even look that busy. Turns out, most people were ordering their tea through WeChat.

The interior of a “tea Starbucks”

Other things I noticed

In China, they actually use a lean-style approach to policy: new ideas or programs are first tested in one province and if it works, they scale it up across the whole country;
Way fewer people smoke on the streets compared to Russia. But you might still run into someone smoking in a public restroom;
We were moving from south to north, but for me the heat and humidity were tough. I ended up relying on taxis and constantly hunting for air conditioning. In Xiamen, for example, the humidity was 74%. Nighttime was way more comfortable;
Without speaking Chinese, things get tricky. When M. wasn’t around, we had to rely on phone translators to talk to waiters;
A lot of places have special sinks and toilets for kids. And when landed in Guangzhou, you could even take a shower right in the public restroom at the airport;
Tons of fruit everywhere. At a regular corner store you can buy a fresh coconut and the cashier will poke holes in it and stick in a straw for you;
To boost local economies, cities or provinces offer special incentives, like waiving taxes for new businesses for the first three years;
Each city we visited had its own food culture and special dishes;
In high-rise buildings, elevators are grouped by floor range, so each one serves only a set of floors, which helps avoid traffic jams inside the building;
In the south, houses often have cone-shaped roofs because of the rain. In the north, roofs are flat;
In Hangzhou, where Alibaba’s headquarters are, there’s a whole business ecosystem built around serving the e-commerce industry;
There’s barely any visual ads on the streets. M. said that most of the ads are inside WeChat. And the cities look nicer without all that visual noise;
Each city has a massive number of shared bikes you can rent through apps like Meituan, Alipay, or Didi;
Parking gates work automatically, cameras read your license plate and there’s no paper tickets or attendants involved.
明燕多謝。

A napkin that turns into a coffee carrier, seafood snacks in a regular supermarket and ads in the subway.

Conclusion: The main feeling I had after coming back was anger and frustration for Russia. As of 2019, the country’s strategy was all about “stability.” There’s no such thing as profit, only a fee for taking risks. But what’s the price we pay for stability? 缺乏增长

Meanwhile, China is a rising superpower. I had a sense that it was on the rise, but I had no idea just how massive that rise really was.

“Context” Training by Gerasichev and Moskotin

Sat, 14 Feb 2026 14:23:49 +0200

I attended Vladimir Gerasichev’s “Context” training. I first heard about it from Yuri Belonoshchenko and Vladimir Voloshin, they mentioned it during their talks at Skolkovo. The training offers a clear, solid take on what results, responsibility, choice, and feedback really mean.

Format

The training runs for three days straight from 10 AM to 8 PM. The first two days were led by Mikhail Moskotin, who was energetic, intense and funny. Maybe he had this mindset to lead “better” than the creator of the training. Whatever it was, it worked. Mikhail was really inspiring. The third day was with Vladimir Gerasichev and it had a much calmer vibe.

Mikhail put the goal of the training into words like this: learn to accept other points of view and clearly show the other person that you understand them. He suggests approaching the material with a learning mindset, asking yourself, “What if this is true?” Here’s some truth:

Interpretation

The training suggests dividing the whole world into what’s “important” and what’s “not important.” Important things are those that actually show up in real life. Unimportant things are those that don’t produce real-world results. Example: if we agreed to meet at 10:00 and I showed up on time, that means the meeting was important to me. If I really want abs but keep eating fries late at night, abs aren’t important to me – fries are. You can easily check what’s important or not by looking at your real-life results.

Everything you have today comes directly from the viewpoints you hold. Everything you don’t have is also because of your viewpoints. The idea behind “Context” is that you can always choose another viewpoint and change how you see a situation.

You always win the game you’re playing. So, if your interpretation of the world is that everyone around you are idiots, you might move to another country. But all those idiots will move with you.

No one has direct access to a “non-interpreted event.” I interpret an event through my own experience. And if I choose to view the event from a certain angle, chances are I’m getting some kind of benefit from seeing things that way.

Wishing something has nothing to do with action or results. I might say I want to learn to ride a motorcycle or earn a million dollars, but if it’s not actually happening, it means I don’t really care, it’s just not important enough.

If I don’t like my current job or I’m unhappy about my relationship with my parents, it means I get something out of that viewpoint. Even if I change the scenery and switch jobs, I’ll probably still feel unhappy. Enthusiasm and interest are something I can choose. If I’m excited to work in IT, I can also choose to feel excited about digging potatoes. I’m responsible for choosing how I feel about what I do.

What I “want” doesn’t actually connect with what I do. Action and desire aren’t tied together. I can choose to do something if it’s important enough to me. There’s a simple way to check this:
you want ≠ you don’t do
you want ≠ you do
you don’t want ≠ you don’t do
you don’t want ≠ you do
This whole idea of “I just don’t want it badly enough” is nothing. It simply means it’s not important enough to me.

Responsibility

There are two positions I can take in life: victim or author. A victim is someone who believes that external forces or other people control their outcomes. Victims blame their results on competitors, emotions, childhood, traffic, weather, circumstances, horoscopes, solar storms or even illness. An author believes everything depends on them, that they’re stronger than their circumstances. And it’s completely my choice which role to take.

Victims feel comfortable with other victims because they reinforce each other’s excuses. They’re uncomfortable being around authors, it’s just too challenging.

When I do something, I’m the author. When I’m stuck thinking, I’m a victim.

Real conversations only happen when both sides take responsibility. Otherwise, conversations turn into explaining why something didn’t happen instead of achieving results. A great example: if I have results, I just show them – no explanation needed. But if I don’t have results, I start gathering analytics and detailed explanations. If the result isn’t there, clearly it wasn’t important to me.

Saying “the goal itself doesn’t inspire me” shifts responsibility onto the goal. Or when someone says “I’m looking for my life’s purpose”, it’s like waiting around for luck. They’re hoping someday they’ll fully express themselves when they finally find the perfect thing. Or the excuse: “leaders are born, not made.” All these examples illustrate a victim’s mindset, it’s comfortable because there’s no risk involved, no real action required and it allows people to complain about circumstances controlling their lives.

What if there’s no such thing as the “right” or “wrong” goal, but instead, I just make excuses for not reaching it?

In every moment, I’m fully expressing myself, just like a sparkler burning brightly. I can’t express myself better now than a second ago. If I’m still looking for my life’s calling, searching is clearly important to me, not actually doing it. Every choice has a benefit and a cost. For example, the benefit of “searching for my life’s calling” is avoiding mistakes, staying comfortable and never having to take responsibility. The price is wasting time, not moving toward goals and failing to push my team forward. When going after a new goal, I could enjoy the thrill, but the thrill comes at the price of risk.

People work with me based on whether I keep my word. First, if I am ready to take responsibility. Second, if I deliver on my promises. Do I typically act as an author or a victim? When do I start blaming external factors for my failures? I’m smart enough to always find excuses, but if I approach like this, results clearly aren’t important to me. I know this because in reality, I don’t have them.

Choice

When a person keeps searching for something they’ll enjoy doing, they’re acting like a tourist in life, saying, “Show me what you’ve got and I’ll pick something I like.” There’s a great video of Mikhail Moskotin explaining this concept in detail.

In reality, it’s impossible to know if you’ll truly like a future goal or not, because you haven’t been there yet (unless it’s a goal you’ve already achieved before). What if you think about a goal without relying on your past experience? Face the future directly instead of backing into it.

If you visualize this, choosing based on past experience just makes your existing frame thicker. Instead, you could expand your frame.

Without a goal, you have no control. It’s like shooting an arrow randomly and then running over afterward to draw a target around wherever it lands, saying, “Yep, that’s exactly what I was aiming for!” Convenient, no responsibility required. With this approach, you might say “why not?”, but you’re just moving chaotically. Right or wrong isn’t motivating, having a clear goal is.

When you’re feeling down or discouraged, ask yourself “What’s my goal?” This shifts your mindset away from feeling sorry for yourself and toward focusing on your future and present.

A healthy path: I want→ I declare it’s important → I actually do it / I get results. An unhealthy one: I want→ I declare it’s important → I don’t do, I waste all my energy convincing people and myself how much I truly want it, even though reality proves otherwise. How do I know it’s not important? Just look at reality. The scary part is how easily I can convince myself to live comfortably in scenario number two.

Feedback

Feedback is neutral information about how I’m showing up, designed to help me achieve my goal. Some behaviors help me reach the goal, I should keep doing those. Other behaviors need adjusting if I want to reach the goal faster.

When receiving feedback, I usually sort it into two boxes: “good” and “bad.” For everything that lands in the “bad” box, I often create elaborate excuses explaining why I didn’t do it differently. By doing this, I’m the one labeling feedback as good or bad. I end up chasing approval rather than focusing on the real goal I wanted feedback on.

If I get offended by someone’s feedback, I gain a hidden benefit, I don’t have to change anything. I get to be right and the person giving feedback “just doesn’t get it,” despite my efforts. This is a convenient way to avoid responsibility and still look good.

Conclusion: Move forward.

The Kamchatka module, grand finale

Sat, 14 Feb 2026 14:21:00 +0200

The final module of the MBA program takes place in Kamchatka. It’s where brainwork meets physical adventure. Some of the highlights: half a day riding snowmobiles across endless snowy landscapes, a helicopter flight with a volcanologist guiding you into a breathing crater, a boat trip to see massive sea lions, a dip in the icy waters of Avacha Bay, freeriding, camping in the snow and three days of deep reflective practice based on Georgy Shchedrovitsky’s methodology.

Announcement of the Kamchatka module

A lot of MBA programs in Europe and the US include off-campus team-building modules like hiking or white-water rafting. And there’s a reason for that. The Kamchatka module is where real friendships lock in. You get to see who people really are, because the usual habits and roles just don’t work out here. What kind of stuff helps with that? Pitching tents in the snow or digging out and reinforcing a giant 6x6 meter firepit with your classmates. When there’s no script to follow, no roles to hide behind, that’s when people show up as they are. And honestly, it’s when you meet yourself too.

The first details and prep instructions for the upcoming Kamchatka module were shared back in May 2018 and the trip itself took place in April 2019. It was introduced by Andrey Volkov, who was originally supposed to lead the expedition. Unfortunately, he couldn’t make it. Volkov is the founding dean of the Skolkovo Moscow School of Management and one of its key visionaries. He’s now leading large-scale projects, including one aiming to get five Russian universities into the global top 100 rankings. Participants were encouraged to start preparing early, learn to ski if they didn’t already and build up regular aerobic workouts 3-4 times a week.

We were also asked to write an essay to reflect on where we were in life, imagine the future we wanted and map out a plan for how to get from here to there. Once our essays were done, we shared them in small groups and had open discussions. That process really helped build even more trust among classmates. To help us get into the right mindset, Andrey Shapenko shared a template INSEAD ,which gave us a clear structure to follow and made it easier to dive in.

Day 1

I flew to Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky from Saint Petersburg with a layover in Moscow. All my classmates joined in at Sheremetyevo and we all took the same flight from there. My flight left St. Pete at 1:15 PM and we landed in Petropavlovsk at 10:05 AM. The whole trip took about 9 hours and 45 minutes, with a 9-hour time difference.

When we landed, two Ural trucks were waiting for us as regular cars can’t make it to the base, “Snow Valley” where all the action happens. The trucks were converted into buses with huge low-pressure tires that can handle deep ruts and rough trails. The ride to the base took about two hours through the wilderness. We got there around 1:30 PM, got settled into our cabins, had lunch and kicked things off with a briefing.

The briefing was set up as a series of stations:

Getting the right gear: this wasn’t your regular ski setup, we were getting outfitted for freeride. The skis are wider, especially at the tips and come with special bindings that let your heels lift when you’re hiking uphill. If you were on a snowboard, you got a splitboard, it comes apart into skis for climbing with bindings that have a pop-up heel piece for steep ascents. We also got climbing skins, sticky strips you put on the bottom of your skis so you can walk uphill without sliding back. Telescopic poles, foldable ski poles that collapse down small, easy to carry. A probe, a long, collapsible rod used to search for someone under the snow. A beacon, a small device you wear that sends and receives signals in case of an avalanche. A foldable shovel. Crampons, metal spikes you strap onto your ski boots for climbing steep, icy slopes. An ice axe, although we all ended up leaving those at the base, we didn’t need them with the conditions we had.

Clothing station. The instructor explained how to dress for hiking and mountain conditions so you stay comfortable. And anyone who ignored the advice and didn’t get Gore Tex gear (a breathable, windproof, waterproof fabric) ended up seriously regretting it.

Tent setup. We learned how to dig out a spot and pitch a tent in the snow so it would be stable and comfortable to sleep in and wouldn’t get blown away overnight. The ideal setup meant digging out a square about 3x3 meters and about a meter deep.
Snowmobile training. You could pick a snowmobile based on your skill level from heavy and steady to light and high-powered. While we were riding through the forest, the instructors watched how everyone handled their machine. Based on that, they grouped us into teams and pairs for the upcoming rides.

What to do in case of an avalanche. They walked us through the two main types. First, there’s a point-release avalanche, it starts small from one spot and picks up power as it moves. That usually happens when a fresh layer of snow doesn’t stick well to an icy layer underneath or when a thin layer of water forms between snow layers with different densities. The second type is a slab avalanche, that’s when a whole sheet of snow sitting on an icy base breaks off and slides down all at once. If someone gets buried, you’ve got about 15 minutes to get them out. After that, chances of survival drop fast, oxygen runs out quickly and the packed snow is heavy and hard to breathe in. The best thing you can do is curl up in the fetal position, it helps create a bit more breathing room. They also told us about a rare case where someone survived after 45 minutes. He had on a big down jacket and he bit into it to get some extra air, it was just enough to stay alive until help showed up. There are also special avalanche backpacks, if a slide starts, you pull a handle and a big airbag inflates, kind of like a life preserver. It helps keep you closer to the surface and less likely to get buried deep.

Ski/snowboard skill check. There’s a small slope with a lift right at the base and that’s where everyone showed what they could do. The conditions weren’t great, more ice than snow that day. Based on how people handled it, they split us into two groups: one for the tougher, more athletic route up to the tent camp and one for the easier, more relaxed version of the hike.

For those who showed enough skill and wanted to take the sportier route, a series of early morning training climbs was planned to test freeride abilities out in real conditions. I got into the sport group.

A 25-hour day wrapped up with dinner and a quick briefing on what was coming next.

P.S. This winter, I finally realized I can’t stand snowboarding. Before the 2018–2019 season, I’d hit the slopes maybe once or twice a year and only to hang out with friends. But once Kamchatka was announced, I ended up going about 15 times that season. We even made a special trip to Sochi for some extra practice at the end of March 2019. Turns out my body wasn’t too happy about it either. In Sochi, I wiped out on the slope so badly they had to call an ambulance that evening. And a couple of weeks before the trip, I developed a heel spur from all the extra running and had to scale back my workouts just to keep going.

Day 2

Up at 6 AM, quick snack, skins on the skis and we set off in a small group along a forest trail heading up «Mount Goryachaya». The hike took about two hours. Physically it wasn’t too hard, especially if you’re into running or anything like that. Around 350 meters of vertical gain over about 5 km.

Then Roman Bryk, the leader of the sport group, rides down the main slope and watches as the rookie freeriders take on the steepest part. Everyone’s got their own style: some confidently bomb down on their boards, others gently belly-flop their way down, lazily swinging their skis, trying to catch some air for balance. I had two edge catches and a couple of falls and then, finally, I was at the bottom. The rest of the descent felt more like drifting through a spring flood in slow motion, just kind of gliding between trees without much control. Proud as hell (!), I made it back to the base second to last, fully aware that with my current technique, I wasn’t having much fun. By the time I got there, everyone else was already gathered for breakfast.

The guides take a hands-off approach, no tips, no advice, unless something on your gear actually breaks. You signed up for this, so it’s on you to keep up with the pace. It really makes you feel your own responsibility out there. You quickly get a better sense of your limits and of yourself. It’s a great example of what “just enough” support looks like for adults in a team or group setting. If you can’t keep up with the group, don’t go. And if you do go, don’t count on luck or someone else getting you to the finish line you’re the one responsible.

They split us into two groups. Our group jumped on snowmobiles and took off at 11:00 AM, riding across open snowy plains and occasionally climbing up and down mountain trails. When the wind picked up and the snow started blowing, if you didn’t have your buff pulled up, it felt like tiny shards of ice hitting your face. At one point, I spotted a snow-white hare sprinting ahead of us totally outpacing the group. By 1:00 PM, we made it to a canyon where we had some off-route free riding. The best part is dropping down from the ridge at full speed for a few moments, you can’t see more than a couple of meters ahead and it feels like you’re flying straight down. Almost like falling. Total adrenaline rush.

At 2:00 PM we reached the spot where the two groups met back up, the others returned from their part of the trip by helicopter. We set up a table and had lunch, soup in giant thermoses that had been brought over from the camp.

We flew up to the crater of Mutnovsky volcano in two helicopter runs. Up there, you’re surrounded by boiling pools of sulfuric acid nearly 400 degrees and thick yellow clouds of steam that smell like rotten eggs. One breath and it hits you, you can’t breathe, it just shuts everything down. Over some of the boiling spots, crusty caps form on the surface, but it’s impossible to tell where the solid ground ends and the acid pool begins. You have to be really careful where you step.

Our group took a helicopter to a nameless bay in Avacha, while the other group headed back to the base by snowmobile. At the bay, a few of us guys decided to take a dip. Later, we took a boat out to see the Steller sea lions. One male weighing up to a ton usually leads a group of around 50 females, each about 350 kg. We flew back to the base, had dinner at 9 PM and called it a day. Well, sort of we headed over as a little crew to one of the cabins for a tea ceremony and stayed up chatting until midnight.

Mindset work / Days 3-5

Starting on day 3, we shifted our focus to thinking techniques. Everyone had the option to join one of four groups: Corporations, Intelligence, Psychosomatics or Entrepreneurship. The day before, we were asked to choose our group, but they didn’t tell us which moderator would lead which one. That was intentional, so we’d pick based on what actually interested us, not who was running it. The groups ended up pretty evenly split. There were four moderators: Konstantin Dikovsky, Pavel Mrdulyash, Artyom Denisov and Egor Maslov. The group presentations were moderated by Sergey Gradirovsky. The discussions were made even richer with help from Maksim Feldman and Milena Milich. Alena Myakisheva and Anastasia Tkachuk helped with all the logistics. I chose the Entrepreneurship group. The rest of what I’ll share is based on our group’s work and what we dug into together.

Each of the next three days followed the same rhythm:
6:00-9:00 AM – freeride training for those aiming to stay in the sport group
8:00–9:00 AM – breakfast
9:00–10:30 AM – intro session with core concepts to set the foundation for group work

10:30 AM–2:00 PM – focused group work with moderators. Each group had its own space, some met in cabin kitchens or living rooms, others in the restaurant area. Our group worked in the hotel lobby. The whole base was turned over to us for the module, so we had total freedom and didn’t get in each other’s way.

2:00–3:00 PM – lunch
3:00–7:00 PM – group presentations. Each team picked a speaker, prepped a presentation using giant sticky sheets, and shared their work with everyone.

After each presentation, we moved into a “questions for understanding” section, basically a dialogue. The presenter had to clarify and defend their points, while the rest of us asked questions. The moderators brought their experience into it too, they would unpack each group’s conclusions in reverse, pointing out gaps in logic or shaky assumptions that the whole argument was built on. The discussion was led by Sergey Gradirovsky. He had a great way of keeping things focused, if the back-and-forth started turning into a debate, he’d cut it off with a clear “noted” and we’d move on. I’ve definitely borrowed that one for myself. One important rule at this stage: no opinions allowed, only questions.

Next came the “judgment” stage. This is where listeners could finally share what they thought about the presentation and give feedback. The presenting group wasn’t allowed to respond or jump into discussion, just listen. The best approach was to take a piece of paper and write down each comment point by point.

7:00-8:00 PM – dinner.

9:00 PM-... – reflection on the day’s presentations. Each group gathered in whatever way worked best for them, some met where the main discussions had taken place, others headed to the pool. By the way, the base doesn’t have a hot water problem, quite the opposite. There’s plenty of it flowing straight from the natural hot springs on site. The tricky part is the cold water. Sometimes, while taking a shower, you realize it’s basically boiling because the cold water in the tanks has run out. The pool was something else, it’s outdoors, filled with naturally hot spring water. You sit there, snow falling around you and every now and then you catch a hare darting past along the edge of the pool.

I have to admit, by the middle of the second day, I (like a few of my classmates) still had no idea what we were really dealing with. And when yet another presentation got unraveled and the group’s defense was torn down, we started voicing our confusion out loud, turning it into a pretty heated dialogue, all eyes on Pavel Mrdulyash for answers. It wasn’t until the third day that we started to grasp the value and logic behind the method. Even then we still had questions.

I’ve got a couple of guesses as to why there was so much confusion during those first couple of days. First – Pavel Mrdulyash deliberately didn’t “lower the bar.” He kept the discussion at his level and expected the rest of us to reach up to it, rather than meeting us where we were. Second – we didn’t sync up on our levels of understanding from the start. On day one, there was no common ground. In hindsight, it might actually be worth making some reading mandatory for future groups, like starting with something by Pyotr Shchedrovitsky. These thoughts came out of a conversation with Denis K., Hey!-)

Our “Entrepreneurship” group was moderated by Artyom Denisov, an MBA-6 grad, we were MBA-8. His style was calm and steady, gently steering the discussion and helping us out of dead ends without pushing too hard. He facilitated things with a light touch. The good part is that Artyom never slipped into the “expert” role, which was great. The not-so-good part was that maybe the group could’ve used a bit more shaking up now and then.

Each of the three days, our group worked on the same topic. But with every round, we refined the definitions, our position and the core problem. By the third day, we finally started to see how the whole process fit within the methodology.

Methodology and concepts

To explain the method, I’ll describe the conceptual framework as it landed in my own head. Georgy Shchedrovitsky in his talks, and later the moderators during the intro sessions, made a bold, provocative claim: most people don’t actually think, and even if they do manage to think something through once, there’s no guarantee they can do it again. One key formula that shaped everything that followed: Experience = Action × Reflection.

The key concept in this methodology is reflection. In Shchedrovitsky’s view, reflection is the ability to really see the full picture, not just looking back at what happened, but also looking a little bit ahead. Planning and design come from that forward-looking kind of reflection. It’s when you stop asking, “What did I do?” and start thinking, “Okay, what if I do this, then what?” That kind of mental play, thinking a few steps ahead, eventually turns into planning, designing and building out real strategies.

Descriptions of two positions M1 and M2, the reflective position

The whole situation is described starting from the current position (M1) and then the desired future state, the target model (M2) is projected. Each situation is described using the format: context, object, person. The person, in a way, rises above the situation and constructs the next desired state while in a reflective position.

1. Context
This is where you describe the situation the object is in. You identify the key factors that define and influence that situation. The goal is to create a shared understanding, a common semantic field for everyone involved in the discussion.

Example: a volatile, export-driven, developing economy; a banking system going through a crisis; a strong presence of technical universities.

2. Object
This is the role or position the person currently occupies, the space or system they’re embedded in.

Example: an entrepreneur who owns several businesses across different industries with a managing partner in each one handling the day-to-day operations.

3. Person
The individual within this context is the subject. This includes values, goals, education, hobbies, feelings, all the key traits that help place the person or group within a shared conceptual framework.

Example: 30 years old, has a strong team, international education, personal resources, connections to investors who are ready to back a new venture, speaks multiple languages and is into triathlon.

Visualization

I was surprised how much easier it is for a group to understand a situation when you visualize it. With words, people can mean different things even if they say the same thing, but visuals are usually a lot more clear.

That made me realize something: visualization is a really important skill for an entrepreneur. The better you are at it, the faster you can connect and align with other people. In complex situations, pictures often explain things better than words. Visuals help you show what really matters, focus on the big stuff and leave out the extra details.

An example of our team’s visualization

Conceptual framework

To make sure everyone understood the visualization the same way, we had to talk through the key concepts first. That way, we all had a shared understanding. Over the three days, we kept coming back to the word entrepreneur, because how we defined it changed how we saw the whole situation. By day three, we landed on something like this: an entrepreneur is someone with limited resources, who creates value through action and takes on personal risk to do it.

Problem

According to the methodology, finding the real problem happens across three levels. While working on the topic of entrepreneurship, we followed this path:

At the first level of problem-finding, you usually get statements like: lack of self-belief, no motivation, no opportunities.

The second level, causes/tasks, is where we get to things we actually know how to work with. At this stage, we’re framing problems as tasks that can be addressed. Examples: weak business education, no international contacts, poor legal infrastructure.

At the third level, we finally enter the real problem space. Here’s how we defined the key issues: the elite doesn’t see value in entrepreneurship; there are strong societal biases against the profession; entrepreneurs often have limited horizons, meaning they tend to think only within the scope of Russia, or even just their own city, when starting a project.

The core problem we landed on was this: a closed mindset keeps entrepreneurs in Russia from building unicorns.

Active Position / Action Plan / Path / Project

When defining a problem, it’s important to understand what active position the person is taking. How are they going to act from that position? If someone states a problem but doesn’t take any active position, it’s just an opinion, empty talk.

A problem is a situation that can’t be solved without rethinking how the system works in the M1 position. In other words, there are fundamental parts of the current setup M1 that have to change, otherwise, reaching M2 just isn’t possible. For example: if you’re a traditional bank that doesn’t use the internet to attract or serve customers, but you still want to grow like it’s the early 2000s – that’s not going to happen unless you completely change how you operate. Or put another way: a problem is a kind of manageable disaster, one you can work with, but only if you’re ready to change the whole structure. A disaster is something you can’t solve, like a war.

According to Shchedrovitsky, a problem is when two people are arguing, both are in the same situation and each is expressing a view that contradicts the other, and yet both are right.

When someone gives advice or shares an opinion, it’s important to ask: what active position are they planning to take in this situation? If the answer is “none,” then whatever was said is just a judgment, basically empty words. An active position means the person is ready to take action, to influence the situation somehow. Otherwise, they’re just staying in a passive, victim-like or purely supportive role. Sometimes, you can help someone shift from just sharing an opinion to actually taking a position by simply asking: “And what are you going to do about it?”

Once you understand the M1 and M2 positions and see the problem through the lens of an active position, the next step is to create a work plan that helps move from one position to the other. Basically, this becomes a project – an idea paired with a plan to make it real. That’s how you go from an initial thought all the way to a concrete solution.

Personal conclusion from the intellectual part

I was deeply impressed by the deep dive into the methodology. One insight that seems obvious but hit me personally: you don’t know how you’ll feel in position M2 while you’re still in M1.

I’ve been doing psychoanalysis for four years now, both individually and in group settings. The practice mainly tries to help you answer the question, “What do you want?” It looks at a person through the lens of childhood struggles and desires, shaped goals and unmet needs for love early in life. From there, psychoanalysis generally splits into two schools: Freud’s view, that we’re driven by instinctual urges (an inner pull), and Viktor Frankl’s, that we’re drawn toward meaning and values (an outer pull)

If Freud’s approach is about awareness in the present, basically M1, then Frankl’s is more about M2, looking ahead toward meaning and goals. What Shchedrovitsky does is bring the two together. He doesn’t treat them as opposing ideas, instead, he connects them through project thinking and taking an active position. To me, that’s brilliant. Freud’s psychoanalysis (M1) becomes about exploring and organizing your inner world, understanding yourself and your place in the moment. Frankl’s approach (M2) is about direction, aligning that organized structure toward purpose. And Shchedrovitsky’s piece, the active position, is what ties it all together. It’s the driving force that helps the two approaches work side by side.

Lately, the thing that’s been on my mind most is the idea of manifestation or showing up fully. In my world, manifestation means when a person’s inner, hidden state fully comes to life through the project they’re working on. Like a negative turning into a photo, it fulfills its purpose. In the same way, a person manifests through their work, bringing their inner self into reality. If Csikszentmihalyi, in Flow , describes what that state feels like, then Shchedrovitsky answers the question, “How do you actually get there?” – through the process of reflection. Without manifestation, there’s no real life.

The process of reflection:

A person “rises above” the state they’re currently in.
They describe their current state M1 by looking at the context, the object and the person. Mindfulness can really help here, it makes it easier to see where you actually are. It’s also worth getting input from others, we’re usually not great at seeing ourselves clearly. Like with bad breath, you can’t smell your own.
Now you design M2. If there wasn’t enough awareness in the previous step, it can feel like you’re staring at an endless sea of options and it’s hard to choose or even name any of them, because everything seems possible. Awareness helps you spot and shape a few clear options. And if you dig into your values and sense of meaning, like Frankl suggests, that space of possibilities starts to narrow down even more.
Next, you build a work plan. You take an active position toward the tasks you need to complete in order to reach M2.

This process is repeated again and again and that, according to Shchedrovitsky, is what thinking really is. There’s no guarantee that M2 will bring joy. There’s always a risk from your current position (M1), it’s impossible to truly know how you’ll feel in the new one (M2). That’s why without taking an active position, real thinking can’t happen. But in the process of moving forward in showing up, in manifesting yourself, that’s where the joy is. That’s what life is.

Overnight in the snow at base camp / Day 6

We had breakfast, then headed to the base of the Vilyuchinsky Volcano. After a quick gear check, we started the climb up to the volcano’s shoulder, about 900 meters of elevation gain. The group naturally spread out with everyone going at their own pace based on fitness. The instructors stayed up front with the faster folks and also covered the back. If you’re a runner, the climb feels more fun, it’s less about downhill skiing and more like cross-country movement as you go uphill.

Some parts of the climb were really steep, you had to edge your skis into the slope at an angle to stay stable. On the steepest sections, we used a zigzag or traverse technique. That way, the vertical gain per step is smaller, making the climb easier and reducing the risk of sliding back. While moving across one of the traverses, I remembered something Yury Belonoshchenko once said about the power of small steps – that you don’t stop when you’re tired, you just shorten your stride. You end up covering more ground over time than if you stop to catch your breath and then start again. The same principle applies in business too.

There’s a nice feeling that kicks in once you’ve committed, when you’ve got point A and point B, you stop asking yourself “Do I really need to do this?” and just focus on the action. It’s the same with the activity-thinking approach: there’s a time for planning and a time for doing. Don’t mix it all into one moment.

I felt the shift the moment I saw the flag and the finish line. That final stretch suddenly felt way easier. It’s a great example of why it helps to mark progress with clear wins and measurable milestones along the way. Seeing how far you’ve come makes the rest of the journey feel lighter.

Each tent had 2–3 people, and digging it out together was actually kind of fun. You team up and just get to work, it really brings everyone together. There’s a feeling of connection when four of you are digging like crazy, setting up one tent, then moving on to the next. The snow, by the way, was 4.5 meters deep. What made it cool was that the situation was stressful, but there were no ready-made behaviors to fall back on. You start to see people for who they are and learn more about yourself too. What I noticed about me: I like digging the space for the tent, but I totally lose interest when it’s time to actually set it up. I just want to move on to something else. It takes effort to stay with it and finish the job.

We got the tents set up and I went off to start the fire, no big deal, done that before. I grab a metal sheet and lay it on the snow. Then the instructor chimes in: you’ve gotta place logs under the corners so it doesn’t sink once it heats up. Okay, makes sense – done. Then comes the kicker: we need to dig out a 6-by-6 meter fire pit, about a meter deep. And ideally, it should have a step around the edge so you can sit on it like a bench. Well, ****.

You start digging and classmates just naturally join in, even Pavel Mrdulyash. No one asked, it’s just clear there’s work to be done and everyone feels it. One thing I noticed: the people who jump in are usually the ones you’ve been talking with the most. With the conversations and shared effort, it feels less like work and more like a moment of connection, like we’re all showing up together. Some people took a break and crashed in their tents. Others kept setting up the rest, making sure the sport group, who’d be arriving later, right around dusk could just drop their gear and join us for dinner.

We got the fire going, opened the soup thermoses, had dinner and gathered around the fire. One of the instructors brought a guitar and luckily, a few people knew how to play. A small group of us stepped away from the fire for a bit, shared toasts, said some kind words and yelled our cheers into the night while hugging each other. By day 6, the whole trip had really brought people closer. And it also made it clear who had stayed on the outside and didn’t try to connect.

When you go to sleep, you crawl into your sleeping bag with the inner liners from your ski boots. If you leave them in the boots overnight, everything will freeze solid and you won’t be able to get them back on in the morning. If you start getting cold in your sleeping bag, take off some clothes. You’ll actually stay warmer since the extra layers won’t steal your body heat. At night, only my face felt cold. Wake-up was at 7:00 AM, followed by breakfast, then we headed back to the base. There we had a reflection session on the whole module and a celebratory dinner. The next day – departure.

Another great moment came from my classmate from China, Minyan. She had injured her back before Day 6, and when she started the climb to base camp, she already knew she wouldn’t be able to finish the whole route, but she went anyway. Even if you know you won’t make it all the way, you can still go and find out where your limit really is. Every bit of progress along the way is a win.

Conclusion: I’d rate the module a 9.9 out of 10. What was great: top-notch organization; the balance and format of blending intellectual work with physical challenge; and how close we became as classmates, both parts of the module really helped with that. What wasn’t great: unfortunately, Andrey Evgenyevich, the leader of both the intellectual and sport parts of the program for the previous two MBA groups couldn’t join us this time.

The US Module: NY, San Francisco, Berkeley, Stanford, NASA

Sat, 14 Feb 2026 14:16:35 +0200

The official name of the module is “Understanding Entrepreneurship and Innovation.” For me, it’s not about the academic content but about the experience. This is my first time in the US. Before the program started, I spent a few days in New York → then flew to San Francisco → the main program took place in Berkeley → we visited Facebook and Bagaveev, plus the Computer History Museum → then Stanford → and finally 42 Silicon Valley.

New York

NY felt like a giant, overgrown Ford factory – industrial, functional, loud and hot. I definitely had unrealistic expectations about the city. The marketing worked, but the reality turned out to be way more down-to-earth.

The best way to sum up my impression of the city is with this moment: one day, I headed over to the skyscrapers in Manhattan, planning to live out my own little Suits scene, grabbing a hot dog from one of the many street carts around the area. That hot dog tasted like it was made out of paper. Pretty sure I could still read the Financial Times headline printed on the sausage. Later, I found out that only the wide shots for the show were actually filmed in New York, the rest was shot in Toronto. Way cheaper.

The subway in NY is terrible: tasteless, dirty and in hot weather it turns into a steam room, though the train cars have AC. There’s a reason for that:

On the subway doors, they don’t just say “do not lean” but also “don’t hold the doors.” Some train cars are fully taken over by a single advertiser. Like, the whole car might be decked out in ads for a cleaning service.

A few things I noticed:
— The Museum of Modern Art was a surprise: when you check your stuff, you scan your ticket and enter your phone number. When you’re picking it up, you just enter your number again and your item rolls out to you automatically from deep inside the coat check. Then a staff member hands it to you.
— You can actually spot eagles in Central Park. Also, joggers stick to the paved paths, even though there are great sandy trails just a few steps away.
— Head out toward New Jersey and it feels like Russia – piles of old machinery, fields and rows of construction trailers.
— Fifth Avenue is made of big concrete slabs that don’t quite line up evenly.

Highly recommend:
One. Elizabeth Street Garden in Lower Manhattan that’s full of statues. You can grab something to-go from one of the nearby restaurants and sit on one of the folding chairs scattered around. This spot was much closer to what I imagined New York would be like. It has that historic, storybook feel like something out of The Goldfinch.

Two. The immersive theater experience Sleeping no More – there’s no linear plot, you’re free to wander through the dimly lit, multi-level set at your own pace. Actors appear out of nowhere and small crowds gather around as scenes unfold: dancing, childbirth, nude bathing, someone burying objects in sand. You can help an actor pack a box or just stand back and watch it all happen. That day I’d already walked 35 kilometers around the city and was exhausted. So when the action in one of the rooms started repeating, I genuinely wondered for a second if I was dreaming.

Subway street art

New York ✈ San Francisco

Here comes a story that’s really important to me about responsibility and setting goals.

My flight was at 7:00 PM on Saturday. When I got to the airport, I found out it was canceled because of the weather. The help desk line was barely moving as lots of flights had been canceled. I called the airline and found out there were no direct flights to SF left, but I could get there through LA. I said “okay,” rebooked for a 10:30 PM flight, checked my bag and went through security.

At 10:15 PM they announced that the flight to LA was canceled too. I call support again and find out my only chance to fly out that night is to get on the standby list for a midnight flight. Standby means you’re basically hoping someone who bought a ticket doesn’t show up and if there’s a free seat, you might get it. I head to the gate and see I’m number 31 on the list. Oooookay. The girl #8 tries to bend the rules and cut ahead, her sister’s getting married the next morning. The system doesn’t care. In the end, one Asian guy gets on the flight. The crowd silently wishes him luck. And that’s it. No flights after midnight, that’s the rule. A line about 200 meters long forms at the help desk. I grab a coffee.

The support says the next available flight to SF is Tuesday evening, three days from now. To find out where my bag is, I have to talk to someone at the info desk. I remember there’s one near the airport entrance, so I head over. The line is about 50 meters long and barely moving. At 3 AM I finally found my bag’s already in SF. And there are no even layover tickets left. They say I can try standby. Flights to SF start leaving every hour from 6 AM. But there are already 52 people for the 6 AM flight on the standby list. I’d be number 3 for 7 AM. I put my name down for that one.

I showed up for the 7 AM standby flight, now I’m fifth on the list. Turns out the airline also overbooked the flight, selling more tickets than there were seats. Everyone who was on the 6 AM standby list and didn’t get on the plane gets automatically added behind me, now there are around 60 people in line. I don’t get on the 7 AM flight. At this point, there’s not much sense in trying more standby flights. Hmm.

I start calling the support every 10 minutes, just hoping someone cancels their ticket. On one of those calls the agent says a seat just opened up on a *direct flight to SF at 9 AM. Cheers – Off to SF!

The precious ticket

Conclusion:

Take responsibility → feel calm.
I was alone in a city I didn’t know. Whether I got to SF or not was completely on me and somehow that felt calming. There were tons of things I couldn’t control, but I could focus on what I could do. No guarantees, just staying present and doing my part.
When you know exactly what you want → you get it with minimal effort.
I had one clear goal: get from NY to SF as soon as possible. I didn’t waste time wondering, “Should I go to LA instead? Maybe I should just stay in NY and see Jack White concert? What if I rented a car and drove to SF?” No, I knew the goal. And from that calm place, I just kept trying one solution after another. That way I wasn’t wasting energy on pointless thoughts. It was easy to see if what I was doing was actually getting me closer to the goal or not.

San Francisco

The group met at Hack Temple, Pavel Cherkashin’s space – a restored Catholic church used for tech events. I was late and missed Pavel’s talk and the presentations from his accelerator, the projects were crypto-related. By the time I arrived, everyone had already been split into teams of eight and given routes with marked spots on the map across San Francisco, where “stashes” with money were hidden, a game format to explore the city.

The interior of Hack Temple

San Francisco is a vibe. Hilly streets, lots of small two/three-story houses, tons of homeless people, graffiti-covered walls, grassy spots where you can just lie down, addicts getting high right on the sidewalks, sudden fog rolling in, wind so strong it nearly knocks you over, wooden piers, packed restaurants with old-school waiters. It’s messy, diverse and interesting.

That evening we moved to Berkeley, the five of us had rented a house there. Definitely the right call. Our late-night conversations on the cozy back terrace turned out to be one of the most meaningful parts of the whole trip.

Berkeley

The “Understanding Entrepreneurship and Innovation” course was taught by Jerome S Engel – a longtime professor at Berkeley’s Haas School of Business. He graduated from Wharton, worked at E&Y, became a VC, then started getting invited to join boards. Eventually, he ended up teaching. Here are a few things from the course that stood out:

— The US pension system holds around $200 billion and a third is in bonds that yield just 2–3%. But to support an aging population, they need at least 8% growth. That’s why a lot of “pension money” flows into the Silicon Valley ecosystem.

— The professor asked if there were any entrepreneurs in the room. When a few people raised their hands, he told them, “No, you’re not.” Real entrepreneurs are out there building something, not sitting in a classroom.

— Silicon Valley is an innovation cluster because it brings together all the key ingredients: entrepreneurs, VCs, big corporations and universities.

Startups are always looking for ideas that can scale exponentially.

— Entrepreneurship in the Valley means chasing opportunities regardless of how much resources they have.

— The difference between managers and entrepreneurs: managers are ready to act when they have the resources, entrepreneurs are ready to act when they see an opportunity.

— Small innovations allow for steady progress and it’s a painless process. But real, disruptive innovation is painful. That’s why big companies often struggle with it.

Startups and big companies see the world through completely different lenses.

— At the Seed stage investors don’t want to take 50%, because that would kill the founders’ motivation.

— 75% of VCs will say the team is the most important thing. Only about 1% will say it’s the market.

— When investing, they usually form a five-person board. The fifth seat goes to an “independent” member — someone proposed either by the founders or the investors (more often by the investors). This “independent” board member is expected to coach the company’s CEO.

— As soon as a founder or CEO raises their first round, their job is to start looking for the next one.

— When a huge investment comes in (over $50 million) the management team usually gets replaced. They need people who’ve worked with big money before.

— Preferred Stock gets converted to Common Stock before an IPO, so new investors can clearly understand the risks. Otherwise, early investors might have different rights in case the company is liquidated. The IPO is more likely to succeed if everything is transparent for new shareholders.

Startup stages and different funding rounds

Berkeley is full of classic one-story American houses with walls about as thick as your finger. Pretty much everything in town revolves around the campus and the main hotspot is probably the university merch shops.

The lecture hall, the campus and the surrounding area

NASA’s Ames Research Center

For the next few days, we stayed in a closed NASA town. You could only get in with an official invite and it was patrolled day and night by its own police car. Besides us, only a few other rooms in the hotel buildings were taken. Bonus: tons of chipmunks, hares and turkeys the size of bulldogs. No clue how Skolkovo pulled this off. But being in that closed-off place brought the group even closer. We stayed up talking until sunrise.

NASA campus

Stanford

At Stanford, we had a Design Thinking workshop, the method was actually developed right there. It was led by archaeology professor Michael Shanks, who’s part of Stanford’s Design Research center. The guy shouldn’t be allowed to teach, he’s way too good. He was so engaging and theatrical that I missed part of the actual material. I was completely caught up in his style.

The content of the course was similar to our marketing module. The core idea behind the method is that when developing a product or service, you start with the user’s problem. You work through usage scenarios and dive deep into the user’s context.

During the workshop, we split into teams and worked on a product concept around “Future Mobility.” We clearly defined the customer’s pain point → brainstormed possible solutions → built a prototype → and pitched it to a panel.

There’s a calm, academic vibe that you can feel all across the campus.

The lecture hall and the area around the university

Bagaveev corporation, Facebook, Computer History Museum, 42 Silicon Valley

One day, we visited Bagaveev corporation and met with the CEO, Nadir Bagaveyev. The company is working on building a rocket with an engine that’s 3D-printed. It’s a small team of five people, and they’ve been working on the project for four years now. They plan to present the final product in year six. Their rockets are designed to help launch small satellites into orbit. The hangar where all the development happens looks more like a giant garage.

In my naive view, I imagined Silicon Valley entrepreneurs as people who give up everything for their idea, working around the clock, burning themselves out in the process. But Nadir turned out to be a real, open person with healthy hobbies. In his free time, he built a car that drives on water (using hydroplaning principles ) and even a prototype of a flying motorcycle.

A water-driving vehicle

A flying motorcycle prototype

A vial with microorganisms that could be sent to another planet

Now their company is raising a new round of funding. I asked him why they don’t just double the investment and try to finish the project in five years instead of six. He said, “This is the pace I’m comfortable working at. If investors don’t like that speed, I can’t work with them.” Wise and confident.

Facebook is like a city within a city. You could probably live at the office, free food from all around the world, coffee, fitness classes, health insurance. The Computer History Museum is pretty boring. If you can skip it, don’t waste your time.

On the last day, we visited 42 Silicon Valley – a private, nonprofit organization with a large campus offering programming courses, like 12-month programs. All classes and housing on campus are free if you pass the competitive admission process. Their teaching method is project-based and very peer-to-peer. At the campus, we met some Russian students working on a project called “growing bricks” – a special kind of mushroom that can be used as bricks once they mature.

The interior of 42 Silicon Valley

Conclusion: I’d give the module 9.5 out of 10. What’s awesome: After getting a taste of Stanford and Berkeley, I can say the professors at Skolkovo are top-notch. It’s not just marketing when they say the modular program lets them bring the best professors from other universities right to the Moscow campus. What could be better: The content’s value could be higher. For example, dedicating a whole day to a deep dive on the Term Sheet instead of just a few hours would be great. I’d also love to visit more companies in the Valley and talk to real entrepreneurs.

For me, this module was a turning point in my whole education. I came back inspired and maybe now the separate pieces of my learning are starting to come together into a clear picture.

Strategic leadership module

Sat, 14 Feb 2026 14:14:44 +0200

In November, we had our third module, led by Pierre Casse. The module covered responsibility, avoiding pain when making mistakes, the tyranny of averages and the ability to switch between different leadership styles based on the situation.

We had lots of group interactions, from small teams to big games involving all 37 classmates. Some class-wide cases were wild: the group dynamics went crazy, agreements were tough and emotions ran high. After these games, you leave with a bunch of self-reflective questions. The module also included several tests to help identify our leadership styles, which gave practical insights on areas for growth.

One day ended with a lecture by Galina Yuzefovich, a literary critic you might’ve read on Meduza. She spoke about “critical thinking” as part of the Skolkovo MBA-8 humanities series. There were alternative lectures, too. You could hear Leonid Klein on the history of entrepreneurship or Dmitry Gutov on contemporary art.

The last day was dedicated to an ongoing leadership course, introduced for the first time in MBA-8. We worked with coaches in groups of six all day. Our coach was Maxim Belukhin, trained at Executive Master in Consulting and Coaching for Change programme at the INSEAD Business School. The sessions felt a lot like group therapy, but participants could give advice.

Classic Freudian analysis helps answer “why,” Jungian analysis is more about “what for.” Group coaching at Skolkovo leans closer to Jung, focusing on questions like: What should you stop doing now? What should you start doing now?

Key insights:

— Leadership means seeing what others don’t or “Leadership – win in crisis situation”;

— Crisis is great if leadership uses it to reinvent reality. Crisis is bad if leadership can’t handle it and stagnation occurs Which in today’s fast-paced world might mean disappearing entirely;

— Cool example: At an annual company meeting, employees are asked to come with a job offer from another company. It creates a freer atmosphere;

— People won’t warn you about risks in rigid environments, causing missed opportunities. What’s the atmosphere like in your company?

— Leaders spend 80% of their time removing obstacles for people;

— Leadership is creating an environment where people achieve, grow, enjoy Happy people work better and see their impact;

— Start task discussions by defining evaluation criteria, not immediately discussing solutions;

— The meaning of your words depends on how your audience reacts;

— Leadership growth: 70% experience, 20% mentorship, 10% formal education;

— Leadership: accepting responsibility to enable others to achieve shared goals under uncertainty;

— Don’t do things that don’t excite you. If you don’t care, why should anyone else?

— Sometimes leaders shouldn’t tell the whole truth—or even the truth at all—to avoid causing pain;

— Happiness leads to action. Unhappiness can lead to blaming others, fantasizing or compensating;

— Acknowledge people’s limitations, but never forget their potential.

“The Baroness” Game

When the baron left, he asked the baroness to stay on their island or she would be punished. She left anyway to see her lover. Returning, she found a madman with a knife blocking the bridge. Her lover refused to help. A boatman agreed to help for money she didn’t have and her friend didn’t lend it to her. Exhausted, she returned to the bridge at dawn and was killed.

Who’s most to blame: baron, baroness, lover, friend, or boatman?

Answers. Numbers are groups’ names. My group 6.

Game Insights:

People interpret the same text in different ways.
Personal values strongly affect perception. Emotions signal personal values.
How people see the situation depends on their perspective.
Perspectives shape assumptions; making hypotheses is crucial for entrepreneurs. Personal values strongly affect perception. We survive by challenging old assumptions.
Understanding different people’s perspectives is crucial. We can assume that we don’t fully understand each other. And if we’re still alive in 2017, absolute understanding probably isn’t that vital. Communication isn’t about passing information back and forth, it’s about how we “invent” each other.
In teams, leaders should ensure everyone shares the same perspective.
The сommitment to a common reference can be a condition for business success. Vision — dream with deadline.
Differences in viewpoints can spark creativity.
The same differences can also lead to conflicts.
Inventing new ways of looking at problems can be a significant advantage.

Leader’s value orientations

Pierre suggests categorizing leaders’ values into four groups:

Action: results, action-oriented, directness, pragmatism, experience, achievements, change, decisiveness.
Processes: systematic, detail-focused, evidence-based, verification, analytical, unemotional, methodical, structured, planning.
Relationships: human motives, team spirit, empathy, relationships, teamwork, emotions.
Ideas: possibilities, new plans, imagination, self-centeredness, new paths, improvement, potential, alternatives, hard to grasp.

— The leader’s role is to shift the team into the right mode at the right time. Simply assembling a team isn’t enough.

— When people are shifted into an unfamiliar mode, they might say something like, “I don’t really like this task I’ve been assigned, but I learned a lot.” It’s an opportunity for people to experience something new and grow. No pain, no gain. Know your cup of tea!

— Usually, people naturally fit into two of these segments at a time. It’s important that the management style matches the context. Here’s how these segments combine:

• Idea + Action — entrepreneurial leadership mindset, the ability to kick off new projects;

• Action + Processes — operational leadership mindset, the ability to turn projects into processes;

• Process + People — managerial leadership mindset, the ability to unlock people’s talents;

• People + Ideas —professional leadership mindset, the ability to be the best in your field and inspire others through it;

• Action + People — line leadership mindset, the ability to stay focused on customers and the market;

• Processes + Ideas — strategic leadership mindset, the ability to see the big picture and think strategically.

— We can’t really motivate people, but we can demotivate them if we pay too little.

— Not better, but the best;

— People can see the truth.

How to achieve high performance

|Healthy Ways|Unhealthy Ways|

|Set ambitious goals|Dismiss others with “You’re wrong…”|

|Encourage open discussion|Pretend not to understand someone on purpose|

|Listen to each other|Set strict limits, like deadlines|

|Build on each other’s ideas|Show dissatisfaction|

|Manage group dynamics|Ask provocative questions|

|Test hypotheses|Have emotional discussions|

|Challenge one another|Create chaos|

|Make sure everyone understands the context|Benchmark against the best in the industry|

|Track progress|Use and fuel conflicts|

If the discussion goes flat and hits a dead end, that’s when it makes sense to use unhealthy methods. Once a decision is made, switch back to the healthy ones.

How to switch leadership styles depending on the context and the people involved?

The chart has two main axes. Vertical – the leader’s personal effort in terms of imagination and creativity; Horizontal – the level of the leader’s involvement in day-to-day operations.
★ – the most suitable leadership style based on the assessment of the business situation, the team’s competence and engagement and the company culture.

The model describes four leadership styles:

Leading by example – High operational involvement, low creativity. The leader constantly shows and tells people exactly what to do. There’s little discussion and a lot of directive energy. An alternative name could be: “Do what I say, now.” Leading from the front.
Leading through teamwork – High operational involvement, high creativity. This style relies on joint discussions and collective decision-making. It takes time and can sometimes fall into the trap of the “tyranny of the average.” Leading from within.
Leading through inspiration — Low operational involvement, high creativity. Here the leader helps the team see problems from a new perspective but doesn’t take part in implementing ideas. Leading from the side.
Leading by empowering — Low operational involvement, low creativity. The leader trusts the team to come up with ideas and execute them. The focus is on support, shaping the vision and strategy, helping overcome roadblocks and recognizing individual contributions. Leading from the rear.

To choose the most suitable leadership style, Pierre suggests using these criteria:
a. Assess the business situation – Is the company operating in a high-risk or low-risk environment? How competitive is it?
b. Assess the team – Is the team highly motivated? How engaged are they in the company’s work?
c. Assess the corporate culture – The more conservative the company, the more likely its leaders will gravitate toward the two right-hand quadrants.

Based on these three criteria, the leader can choose the style that fits best.

Comprehensive leadership course with Maksim Belukhin

The last day of the module was a small-group leadership course. During the course, we received short reports based on our 360-degree feedback survey, which we had filled out a month earlier. The survey was designed to highlight both our strengths and the areas where we could grow. It compared three perspectives: how we see ourselves, how our teammates see us and how the school’s experts evaluate us.

In our groups, we took turns getting team assignments, completing them and then analyzing the group dynamics after each exercise. For example, one participant was given a scenario to produce a short pantomime of a scene from the movie Moscow Doesn’t Believe in Tears. They received a script with roles, props and a video camera. The final video couldn’t be longer than four minutes.

It’s interesting to see how you show up in these exercises and how your teammates do too. The biggest benefit of these games is probably the deeper trust they build within the team.

Conclusion

I’d give the module an 8 out of 10. What I liked: All the self-tests before each theory block, they really help you see how Pierre’s concepts apply to you; Group work – absolute fire; The full leadership course flows naturally from Pierre’s ideas and makes them feel personal, creating a solid mix. What I didn’t like: Pierre’s course got cut by a day to make room for the leadership program; Compromise is not great.

Marketing module

Sat, 14 Feb 2026 14:11:33 +0200

In October we had the second module at Skolkovo focused on marketing. Over a few days, working in a small group with other students, we came up with a new product for the market and built a marketing strategy for it.

We went through the journey: figured out the context → identified the customer’s pain points → answered the question in their head, “What will you change in my life?” → defined the core emotion we want to trigger → described the solution → mapped out which channels and how we’ll connect with our customers.

I was a bit skeptical at first. I’ve already worked on growing both service and product brands, so I worried the module might be full of generic, disconnected stuff. I’d also heard from the MBA-7 that there were some complaints about it. And half of the pre-reading was straight from Kotler, way too academic for my taste.

My worries didn’t come true, I finally pulled my scattered marketing knowledge into a clear structure. Before, I could talk on a single topic and jump from one to another. Now I understand the whole system, I can spot the actual problem faster instead of just the symptom.

We had two guest speakers at the module. The first, Dmitry Kuznetsov, head of Google Russia, talked about VR and artificial intelligence. His presentation was very restrained and corporate. The second guest, Vladimir Pirozhkov, is an industrial designer who spent many years abroad working at Toyota and Citroën. He now runs an innovation and industrial center in Moscow. He spoke about printing living microorganisms, military developments and building factories on asteroids. It was truly inspiring.

One of the groups is presenting their work.

The course was led by Luis Martinez, an eccentric professor from the Spanish business school ESADE. He taught with great energy, guided us and gave feedback on our group work. Teamwork once again turned out to be probably the most important part of the learning experience. Here are a few takeaways from the module:

— Marketing – choose me darling;

— It’s about building skills, not just collecting knowledge, that’s what the module is really about;

— We’re not competing with companies; we’re competing for customers;

— Entrepreneurs build companies based on one of these assumptions:

A technological innovation at the core (technology-driven). For example, once it became possible to embed the internet into home appliances, we started seeing refrigerators with screens that let you order groceries right from the door. Fewer than 10% of these companies ever become profitable.
The other approach is focusing on “people with problems” (pain point method, customer-centric). Companies that take this route are far more likely to turn a profit.

— A more effective market approach is built around solving people’s pain points now, not in the future;

— A marketer can’t think in terms of B2B or B2C, only H2H, human to human. People buy from people;

— Among all target groups, it’s crucial to understand your main one – marketing resources are limited;

— You can target two audiences, but only if they overlap;

— Strategy is about cutting the excess / denial exercise. When building a strategy, say “no, thanks” as often as possible. Avoid the phrase “why not?” and don’t jump at every new idea;

— The rule of innovations – don’t ask customers what they want in a new product. Air conditioning was invented by understanding the audience’s problem, not by running surveys;

— A customer usually goes through this chain: I know (awareness) → I’d try it (branding) → I got it (distribution strategy) → I use it (product) → I evaluate it (meets expectations). If it’s OK → they go back to “I’d try it” (loyalty). If it’s NOT OK → they’ll never use it again. And right now we’re being bombarded from all sides at the “I know” stage, all those ads and banners everywhere. But the whole chain has to work effectively. Otherwise, you just burn out the market.

— There are key success factors in a company, KSF – the things that let a company win. And there are key not-failure factors, KNF – the basics a company must have by default, like the entry ticket to the industry. For example, if you’re selling real milk while all your competitors are selling powdered water, that’s your KSF. But once everyone starts selling milk, it turns into a KNF.

— When we make mistakes, the only thing we really need is progress;

— The more macro functions you strip away, the more successful you become. That’s basically how new businesses emerge and how competition is won, when a single micro-process ends up changing the entire infrastructure and approach.

Working on the marketing strategy

Steps for building the strategy

Step One. Define the context and try to understand the customer archetype. Here, it’s important to dig into the details, constantly asking “why?” The key is to go deep, not wide, when describing the archetype.

Example: Richard is 38 and has been working at “Ros-Ruki” for the past six years. He’s the company’s technical director and his team is developing a device capable of collecting soil from the moon’s surface. There are eight engineers on Richard’s team, and they all end up working late to meet the project deadline. Because of this, Richard is having family issues, his wife is upset that he spends so little time with their daughter. The head of Ros-Ruki, Mike, is pressuring Richard, since in six months he’ll need to present a spending report for the grant funding the project. Mike knows he could lose his job if he doesn’t show results. Richard feels Mike’s pressure but also realizes hitting the deadline will be tough, they’re currently working on the device’s PCB, which is meticulous and highly responsible work.
A PCB is that green board with all the little soldered bits you see inside any electronic device.

Step Two. Define the customer’s “pain point.” For our team it looked like this: Richard is stuck doing routine work and has no personal time.

Step Three. Define the “flag.” This is the customer’s answer to the question: “Brand X, what do you mean in my life?” Here’s the framework for creating a flag:

You…
The role you play in my life…
How my life will get better…
Which part of my life improves, in what context or situation.

For Richard you are Ironman that multiplies the ability to develop edgy technologies.

The flag is never shown directly to the customer and never appears in advertising, it’s for internal use only. Think of it as an internal guideline for the company. For example, it’s a handy way to explain what the company does to a new employee.

Step Four. Choose one core emotion – the main feeling you want the customer to experience when interacting with your brand. You can use an emotion map for this. For engineer Richard we chose empowerment.

Step Five. Think about how everything we’ve outlined so far will be reflected in the product or service. For our fictional engineer, the product was going to be a computer program where he could input the requirements for the final board and it would generate a functional circuit diagram, a list of necessary components and even a layout model for the board.

Step Six. Map out the customer journey— rom the first touchpoint to purchase and actual use. Think through every interaction and what happens at each one. In our case, we imagined Richard visiting a website for board components, seeing our banner, getting demo access, exploring the product and then going to his top manager, Mike, to tell him about the solution…

Group work on the communication strategy

Step Seven. Final implementation of the strategy.

Cortex and limbic System

— There are two systems in the brain involved in decision-making. The limbic system consumes little sugar, works at about 11 MB/s, makes reactive decisions, drives emotions and relies on habits. The cortex is slow, burns glucose, works at about 40 bytes/sec and requires deliberate thinking. The limbic system is involved in decision-making much more often than the cortex.

— It’s great when marketing manages to reach the customer’s limbic system. Customer loyalty is beneficial for both the client and the company. The company spends fewer resources on retaining customers and the client doesn’t waste energy deciding whether to buy. Very often, to save energy, decisions are made in the limbic system.

Example: You’re driving down the road and catch some movement in the woods out of the corner of your eye. If your cortex were in charge, it would go like this: Hmm, something big is moving → maybe it’s an animal → could it be on two legs? → no, too big for that, probably four legs → likely a deer → weighs about 200 kilos… Meanwhile, your limbic system reacts like this: Danger → hit the brakes. That’s how you can survive.

Conclusion

I’d give the module a 6 out of 10. The good part is that it gives a universal framework and can be useful even for people with marketing experience. Group work was awesome. The downside is that the content density was low, I’d double it, and the prereading with old-school Kotler felt outdated and didn’t really connect to the module slides.

Entrepreneurship module

Sat, 14 Feb 2026 14:11:03 +0200

In September we had the first Entrepreneurship module as part of my MBA program at Skolkovo. We dove into how investment funds work, how companies are valued at different stages and how decisions are made in high-uncertainty conditions.

Before that, we had an “intro game” to get to know our group and the campus. Besides lectures and group work, the program included two guest speakers, a welcome evening with the MBA-7 group and a few organizational events. The daily schedule went like this: breakfast at 8AM, lectures and group sessions from 9AM to 6PM, a guest speaker from 6PM to 9PM and then group prep for the next day until about 1AM.

Before the module, they sent us pre-readings, mostly case studies, about 200 pages in total, plus a list of recommended books. Each case was a detailed breakdown of a real-world business, packed with metrics and in-depth descriptions of its processes.

Some of the cases were from Russia, but most were international examples. When I first started reading, I thought, “If it’s not about Russia, how is this going to be relevant?” Turns out, working through a case is really about learning the methods and approaches, and those are universal, no matter the context.

View of the classroom during the lecture

The lecture part is always mixed with group work. Each group session ends with a presentation of our solution, followed by a discussion in the classroom. After that, the professor walks us through how the case actually played out in real life. My group had six people.

Everyone’s different, some have experience running production, others come from consulting or auditing. The group is super active and that’s probably the biggest challenge. At the start we spent a lot of energy just figuring out how to structure our workflow. You learn a ton from your classmates and even more, if you pay attention to how you behave in the process.

The course was led by Benoît Leleux from IMD. He’s originally from Belgium but spent many years in the US. He’s invested in 20 companies and had some level of involvement in every case we studied, you can really feel that. Here are a few key takeaways for me:

Raising money

— The cost of raising money for a startup is different at each stage. There are four main stages:

Seed – when there’s just an idea and a team. At this stage, an investor might put money into the idea if the founders can convince them they’ll get a 75–100% annual return;
Start-up – when there’s a product and the first sales in the target market. Here, investors expect around 75% annual returns;
Growth – by this point, the core ideas are validated and funding is for scaling up. You need to show investors the company can deliver growth, returns of 25–50%;
Late – when the company has already gone through its rapid growth phase. Funding usually comes not from funds but from corporate partners. For example, teaming up with a large company to access their customer base. Investors at this stage expect about 15–20% annually.

— A company’s valuation and the size of the funding round is always discussed together with the conditions the company must meet (with all the “ifs”). Valuation by itself is an abstraction, the terms make it real.

— Companies raise money in rounds because it makes the valuation more accurate. You give up a smaller equity stake, promise more predictable results and it’s easier to convince investors. This process is called staging.

— Staging is interesting because if an investor comes in during the first round and the startup delivers on its promises, the valuation goes up in the next round. Then the investor can sell part of their shares at a higher valuation.

— Staging also pushes founders to assess their company and their ability to deliver on all those “ifs” more realistically at each round. If they overvalue the company early on, they risk ending up in a situation where the share price in the next round is lower than in the previous one. And that’s a really bad signal for the market.

For example: we value our company at 10 million and raise 1 million for 10%. We commit that in 18 months we’ll have a working technology that can increase a sow’s litter size from 25 to 32 piglets.

— Reading TechCrunch announcements about funding rounds without all the “ifs” is pretty pointless;

— When raising money, negotiations are often all about those “ifs.” The conversation usually goes like this: “Whatever valuation you want, you can have it. But if you don’t deliver on all the ‘ifs,’ we’re taking it all back”;

— You don’t need to spend hours debating exact deadlines for each “if”, everyone just understands they need to be met fast;

— A normal, healthy entrepreneur hates risk;

— One idea kept coming up: Dilution is nominal. Run out of money is terminal;

— A business plan itself isn’t as important as the process of thinking it through;

— Early-stage startups aren’t really interesting to clients or big companies. First, you have to earn their trust.

Negotiating with investors

— Investors use three moves to test whether a founder is realistic:

They ask if the founder understands that a different CEO could be brought in if that person would be more valuable for the company. If the founder freaks out, it’s a red flag, they could end up hurting the company. You can’t think of yourself as untouchable.
They set up a board of directors with four investor representatives and only one from the founders’ side. Investment funds have the reputation of being laser-focused on making money, while founders usually don’t have much reputational weight yet.
When the founders present their business plan and all the “ifs,” investors might say: “Okay, we agree with your valuation. We believe you’ll hit revenue of N with the profitability you’ve outlined. But let’s include in the agreement that no dividends will be paid until you actually reach N with all the ‘ifs’ met.

These kinds of questions are called ‘smoking out of entrepreneurs’.
Experienced founders respond with something like: ‘No problem, of course we’re committed to hitting the targets we set. But if we reach them in N months, we want to keep a bigger share of the equity.’

— If a company raises funding but doesn’t become a unicorn, just turns into a ‘walking zombie’ with steady revenue, investors can ask to have their money returned with all the accrued interest. Only after that can the founders start taking a share of the dividends.

Due Diligence, the situation in Russia and sexy businesses

— It’s harder for B2B companies to go public because, at the end of the day, it’s ‘regular’ people buying the shares;

— A business plan itself isn’t as important as the process of thinking it through;

—A pitch deck is never truly finished, it’s an endless iterative process;

— Big companies often avoid entering the same market with a new technology because of the ‘why shoot yourself in the foot?’ mentality. (By the way, there’s an explanation of this in The Innovator’s Dilemma );

— Once an investor confirms they’re ready to invest, a Term Sheet is signed and the Due Diligence process begins. During Due Diligence they check the founders’ and key team members’ backgrounds, the functionality of the solution, potential patent infringements and the overall ‘cleanliness’ of the company. This process can take quite a while and cost anywhere from a few thousand to several million dollars. Only after that is the investment agreement signed;

— There are few investment rounds In Russia or business acquisitions because doing a full, legally sound Due Diligence is often nearly impossible;

— If the round closes, the startup pays for the due diligence. The cost is deducted from the funding amount;

— A situation where a startup takes the Due Diligence report from one investor and shows it to another is basically impossible. Investors are usually more like friends than competitors;

— Investors insist on getting preferred shares, which give them priority in getting their money back if the company goes bankrupt;

—It’s always better to have more resources than you think you need. That gives the company more resilience. If you don’t have that buffer, cut down the number of directions you’re working on;

— In developed countries a lot of processes are outsourced. In developing countries that usually doesn’t work, there just aren’t companies with well-established specializations. That’s why many businesses end up being vertically integrated. For example, a model pig farm might start selling specialized feed storage platforms to the market because they had to figure out how to make them themselves and the product turned out to be in demand;

— You win long-term if you’re a maniac about operational work;

— Slip age is when the business is making money overall, but you don’t really know which areas are driving it and you fail to notice when a part of the business is running inefficiently;

— Some brands make products specifically for sales. For example, Nike has collections that are sold only in outlet stores;

— Do not ask for permission, ask for forgiveness. A short way to describe the entrepreneurial spirit inside a company;

— Companies can roughly be divided into three types: VC / Startup – no established model or market yet, business processes are still messy. Growth – the model works, and the company is in a rapid growth phase. Buyout / Mature – the business is stable and fully developed. The VC stage is what many entrepreneurs see as the ‘sexy’ business. But there’s often more money in the third stage, which people tend to ignore because it seems boring. Benoît admitted he loves boring businesses – the more boring, the better, in his view. Sexy businesses always have more competition, full of players chasing their ego rather than making money.

About entrepreneurship

— Management is creating a role that others perform, while you remain responsible for the outcome;

— People see the world differently. Some think it’s completely unpredictable, so why bother making any plans? Others believe it can be predictable, so if you have a stable job and salary, you’re safe. In reality, the world is somewhere in between, with a high level of unpredictability;

— Entrepreneurs spend their time gathering means, methods and leverage points. Once they’ve built up enough, they discover new opportunities. Steve Jobs’ Stanford speech touches on this;

— Methods build up by answering these questions: Who am I? What do I know? Who do I know?

— Start with intention, don’t wait for opportunities to come to you.

Conclusion

The module gets a 9 out of 10. The best part is: it set a high bar for the rest of the courses and the material is packed with value. The pre-readings and group work add a lot. The downside is that the guest speakers didn’t really connect much to the module’s topic.

How I applied for an MBA at Skolkovo

Sat, 14 Feb 2026 14:10:07 +0200

I first heard about the MBA program in my third year of university when I launched my first project – the branding agency AGRRR. Back then, I thought it would be great to gain that kind of experience. Now, I can explain that I need an MBA to strengthen my skills in financial planning and strategic management. I also want to build useful connections since I plan to continue doing business in and from Russia. But most likely, I actually formed the real reason for pursuing it back in my third year.

Choosing a school

To choose the right school, I attended two MBA program fairs and spoke with students from Harvard, Haas, INSEAD and HEC. In 2015 I went to London for a presentation at the London Business School. There were 7 people at the presentation: 5 Indians, 1 American and 1 Norwegian.

At the same time, I was learning English because I knew I needed a couple of certifications such as GMAT and TOEFL for admission. By the end of university, my English was still weak, so I had to start from scratch. I decided to begin with the TV show “The Walking Dead,” watching it in English with subtitles. Not the best choice, since most of the episodes were filled with zombie growls. After that, I switched to lessons with tutors.

The more I looked into the schools, the more I realized that the program is primarily for those building corporate careers. Even at institutions that promote entrepreneurial spirit, like Haas, after graduation, most students end up working as employees. The second thing that bothered me was the need to take a break from the projects I was working on for a year or two. At that point, I wasn’t considering part-time programs.

Getting to know Skolkovo

In February 2017 I saw an ad for the MBA at Skolkovo and decided to visit the campus. I was sure it would be my first and last visit to the school, as I was biased against MBA programs in Russia. It seemed like in Russia, everyone was just trying to make money off MBA education, no matter who they were. During the presentation at Skolkovo, I heard some important points:

The program lasts for 18 months, in a modular format – one module, one topic, one week per month. During this week, you live on campus, with classes running from morning until late evening. You balance the program with work, immediately applying what you’ve learned in practice;
There are 50 people in the class, half of them are entrepreneurs. Maybe there are a lot of entrepreneurs at Stanford or MIT, but this is not typical for European institutions. And it’s always more interesting with practitioners, people who know how to take responsibility;
Classes are in English and the instructors are visiting professors from Cambridge, IMD, ESADE, IESE. The way they present it is this: the format of bringing in professors from other schools allows them to invite the best experts in their fields. International practices are taught with a focus on the specifics of the Russian market. The program also includes two international modules: one in Silicon Valley and another in China.

The building where classes take place

How I applied

I decided to apply. The first step was preparing the document package: my diploma, resume, a couple of recommendations and answers to 4 questions about motivation and plans. I sent the documents on April 5th. The second step was an interview on campus, an English proficiency test and a logic test. I arrived on campus on April 18th. The interview was with Nadezhda Agapova and it lasted an hour and a half in the format of a friendly conversation. That same day I received confirmation that I passed to the next stage – an in-person interview with one of the founders of Skolkovo.

On April 25th along with 5 other potential students, I went to a meeting with Andrey Rappoport. At the stage of the interview with the founder, 30% of the students are eliminated. What I remember most from the meeting is how Andrey Rappoport explained that he and the other founders created Skolkovo because they realized the need to develop a new generation of managers in Russia if we want meaningful changes in the country. We discussed how Skolkovo pays attention to the legacy of the Russian management school of Georgy Shchedrovitsky. When I read Organizational Management Thinking, I couldn’t believe that someone in Russia could think so comprehensively and consistently about management processes, highly recommend reading it. A week later, I received word that the interview went well, and I was accepted.

Grant competition

At Skolkovo you can win a grant that covers up to 50% of the tuition fees and I decided to participate. By early June, there were 270 people applying for the MBA program. Among those who passed all the admission stages 16 projects were selected to take part in the competition.

As part of the competition, we had to present our project in a 5-minute pitch and answer questions from the jury. The jury consisted of top managers from renowned companies like MasterCard, Wimm-Bill-Dann and Rostelecom. I was the first to present, which I was glad about. Waiting for your turn while watching others present can be nervous. The projects varied: medicine, blockchain, real estate, oil development. The main prize of €30,000 went to my future classmate Samvel, who develops electric vehicle charging stations using Russian-made components. Most of the projects were strong, well-developed, with excellent presentations. It was especially satisfying to win a €15,000 grant in such a competitive field.

The first module starts in September. Let’s go.

Thanks to: Oksana Sichenikova, Maria Polikarpova, Nadezhda Agapova, Maxim Feldman, Erik Brovko, Denis Sobe-Panek, Boris Fizulov, Evgenia Gekman, Darya Kholodova, Lydia Agafonova, Grisha Maslak and Vladimir Gorovoy.

Marketing on marketplaces

Sat, 14 Feb 2026 14:09:04 +0200

About half of our clients come through marketplaces and classifieds, so we’re always working on improving how we market through those channels. For Biz-cen.ru we use platforms like Cian, Yandex Realty, Avito and others. With LavishShoestring.com, our vintage goods project, we listed items on Amazon, eBay and Etsy. While paid search ads come with tons of settings and detailed analytics, marketplaces don’t give you that kind of control. So, to attract more customers, we build custom tools on top of those platforms.

The built-in marketing tools on marketplaces often make it surprisingly hard to understand how listings are ranked. For instance, on Amazon, tracking daily views for a specific category means manually logging stats day by day, adjusting the date range each time. And Avito still doesn’t show a daily breakdown of views, you can only see the total number of views since the listing went live.

There are two main reasons:
— First, marketplaces don’t want to overwhelm users with too many settings. They stick to a simple model: want more customers? Pay the platform more. On eBay, for example, you can boost your ranking in search results, but only if you agree to give the platform a bigger cut when the item sells.
— Second, building solid advertising tools inside a platform is tricky. It’s a balancing act. If they give sellers too much clarity, say, explaining how headlines affect ranking, some businesses will game the system to climb higher in the results. That might work for sellers, but it often leads to messy, unreadable titles for buyers.

We study each marketplace’s search algorithm and build custom layers on top of their internal analytics systems. To make sure the way we optimize our listings actually leads to more sales, we run experiments. And since marketplaces don’t offer tools for quick testing, we automate the whole process ourselves.

An example of our work to boost sales on Amazon
To boost item sales on Amazon, we started by building keyword sets for each product category, vases had their own, decanters had a different one. Next, we created an auto-generator for titles that pulled info from each item’s questionnaire and began testing how the order of words in the title affected search rankings. Then we moved on to bullet points, experimenting with how different descriptions impacted visibility and conversions. After that, we added up to 1500 relevant keywords to each product. Amazon doesn’t let you include keywords during bulk uploads. So we had to build a separate module that updated each listing after it was already live.

Working to grow customer traffic from marketplaces is a niche in marketing that very few people tackle professionally. Every now and then, a new tool pops up that automates a small part of the process, but I’ve never seen a single product that fully covers even one marketplace end to end yet.

Telling the difference between Pretenders and Problem-Solvers

Sat, 14 Feb 2026 14:00:20 +0200

In our company, there are people who know their stuff way better than I do. And when everything goes according to plan, things run smoothly. But real work always brings surprises. So how do you tell if something went wrong because of the employee or not?

When progress in some area stalls for a while, I see two possible scenarios. In the first one, the work is actually being done right: solid hypotheses are built, tested and refined. Let’s call these folks the Problem-Solvers. In the second case, the person just doesn’t have the necessary knowledge or skills. Let’s call them the Pretenders.

Over time, I’ve come up with a way to spot the difference. Problem-Solvers are open during discussions. They take responsibility for mistakes, explain what’s going on in plain language and lay out a clear path forward. Their mindset is: “I know I can figure this out, I learn from my mistakes.” Pretenders, on the other hand, speak in circles, avoid clear answers and tend to blame others. Their driving force is fear of being discovered. They often rely on past achievements to cover up current gaps.

I’ve never been able to turn a Pretender into a Problem-Solver. My take is that the Pretenders have built a life around avoiding responsibility, not just at work. Real growth, I believe, only happens when someone takes ownership of their life. But when fear is the main motivator, people only learn just enough to stay hidden. That’s a dead end.

In a perfect world, a good leader knows how to spot and keep the Problem-Solvers and filter out the Pretenders before they even make it past the interview.

How Venture Studios Help Big Companies Survive in the AI Era

Thu, 01 Jan 2026 21:06:00 +0200

A venture studio is an organization that creates and grows startups. Studios focus on a specific industry and, unlike accelerators, they give strong hands-on operational support to startups.

Sometimes big corporations create a venture studio inside the company. The main problem they try to solve is the “innovator’s dilemma.” This idea, described by Clayton Christensen, is about how big companies miss new markets and breakthrough technologies because they focus on defending their current market. And today, many breakthroughs are connected to AI.

Sometimes venture studios are built by serial entrepreneurs with deep expertise in one vertical. Their experience in that industry helps them pick better projects to start. And it helps them give the kind of support startups really need in that specific space.

A clear example of companies that did not solve the “innovator’s dilemma” is HDD makers (hard drives for computers). At some point, SSD technology started to appear. At the beginning, SSDs were extremely expensive for consumers, and the market was tiny. But later, SSD prices dropped, and the market size grew fast.

So the HDD companies that did not react in time — and did not acquire SSD teams — closed down and left the market.

Four Key Success Factors for Venture Studios

1. Industry specialization

One key feature of a venture studio is a focus on a specific market domain, for example: healthcare, finance, or programming environments. This specialization makes it easier to build a strong process for choosing which startups to launch. Operational support is also more effective when projects are in the same vertical, because startups in one industry often face the same kinds of problems.

Also, investing in the infrastructure needed to support startups in one industry is cheaper than building infrastructure that serves several verticals at once.

When several startups run inside the same studio, teams can share knowledge and experiment results across the portfolio. This gives access to fresh data from other companies’ tests, and it increases the speed of validating ideas. A network that is useful for one startup becomes available to the others, too.

A real example of industry specialization is Askona — a company that makes sleep products. It launched its own venture studio, where it created products related to rest and recovery.

2. Building repeatable processes

Industry specialization gives a clearer view of what stages a startup goes through inside the studio. This helps the studio build infrastructure that speeds up those stages. It includes written processes, best practices, and frameworks to follow at each stage of growth. This helps the startup team move faster.

At this step, it is important to balance freedom and control. Freedom is important for entrepreneurship. Proven processes help solve typical problems that every startup meets. The studio’s operational support should set a direction — but it should not dictate one strict “do this, then that” instruction.

Operational support can cover topics like:
A. Choosing a market that is big enough, and how to estimate its size;
B. Structuring the process of finding ideas for the next project;
C. Choosing the right product metrics, and ways to influence them;
D. Resources for hiring people, marketing, product expertise, and customer development.

3. Fail really-REALLY fast

The proven parts of the process help startups move faster from day one. And unlike a typical “market startup,” a founder inside a venture studio does not have to constantly think about fundraising. They can focus more on building the company.

This also means that if you set target metrics for each stage, you can test faster whether the project finds PMF (product-market fit) or not. In the end, the venture studio format lets you choose projects in a more structured and thoughtful way — and also shut them down faster if they fail.

4. Skin in the game

One of the key risks Christensen describes in The Innovator’s Dilemma is this: big companies created R&D centers (early versions of venture studios), and one major mistake was staffing them with teams from the parent company. Those teams brought the values and habits of a large, established company, not an entrepreneurial approach. And in the end, it made it hard to launch breakthrough ideas inside the R&D center.

A venture studio is supposed to be a startup environment. It is important that the studio team has an entrepreneurial spirit. In practical terms, this means planning and delivering P&L. Emotionally, I would describe the startup environment like this:
A. The thing you build feels like your life’s work. The goal should be something you want to tell your children about.
B. Your “life” depends on persistence, strategy, flexibility, and the ability to take risks. This is the position Nassim Taleb called “skin in the game.”

The same applies to founders of startups inside a venture studio. Most often, these are entrepreneurs, and less often experienced corporate managers. The entrepreneurial position matters because it shapes the founder’s values.

I took part in a long discussion about how to organize venture studios effectively. We discussed the idea that corporations sometimes have people with an entrepreneurial mindset who are ready to lead a startup. But we concluded that the qualities that helped those people succeed inside a corporation can also block them from launching a project from zero. For better results, it is important to build teams that include entrepreneurs.

Conclusions:

Venture studios are a way for big, established companies to avoid losing market leadership.

Industry specialization helps startups get the exact expertise they need.

Processes and infrastructure built for one product also help other projects, because they have similar needs.

The studio accumulates expertise in key product success metrics and how they change over time. That means you can decide faster whether to keep building the project or stop it.

To successfully launch new projects, it is important to build an entrepreneurial spirit inside teams.

How responsibility gets shared, why building systems matters and the skill of putting out fires

Mon, 25 Aug 2025 11:24:02 +0200

How do people share responsibility?

Responsibility, whether at work or in personal relationships is always split the same way: 100% on one side and 100% on the other. When you’re working toward a goal together, it’s not about shifting the responsibility onto someone else. It’s about agreeing on how to build a system that will help you reach that goal.

The moment someone says, “I’m 99% responsible,” they’re already starting to give up control over the outcome. And if things don’t go well, it’s easy to just blame the other person. That’s how you slip into a victim mindset. And once you’re there, it’s hard to learn or figure out how to actually get things done.

Focus on the system, not on who’s to blame

— Okay, but if I’m not blaming anyone and taking full responsibility, how am I supposed to get things done? I can’t do everything by myself.

When you discussed the task as a team, you were actually building a system together, figuring out how you’d work to reach the goal. So if the result doesn’t happen, the only thing worth focusing on is how to improve that system. What needs fixing to make it work? The key question isn’t “Who’s to blame?” but “How do we improve the system to get the result?”

In all of this, we’re assuming the people you work or build relationships with actually want to get things done. But if they don’t, even then, it’s on you. You’re the one who chose to work with them. That’s 100% your responsibility. And chances are, there’s something in it for you, some reason you picked that person or keep acting in a way that stops you from getting the result.

When I started Biz-cen.ru, I was responsible for pretty much everything. And when the first team members joined, I was sure they’d mess things up, make mistakes, miss the mark, maybe even ruin our chances. But the truth is, that mistrust wasn’t about protecting the business. It came from my need to control everything and feel important. Whenever someone on the team got something wrong, I’d jump in and tell them they were doing it wrong. But people don’t like feeling blamed and pretty quickly, our conversations would turn into blame-and-defend mode.

It took me a while, but I finally realized there’s no point in blaming anyone. What actually helps is getting the team together and figuring out how to improve the system so we can do better tomorrow than we did today. That simple shift really worked. First, it made it clear who actually fits the team and shares our values. And second, people started to feel like they mattered, because they had the power to make a difference. When you give people space to make decisions, you give them a chance to show what they care about.

How do you get things done?

People differ in how they solve problems. And there are two key traits that define your approach: first, taking responsibility; second, the ability to build systems. That means setting up parallel processes that not only help you solve the problem faster but also keep it from coming back in the same way later.

Let’s use a simple example: you’re in a village and your cousin’s house catches fire while he’s away. What you do next shows a lot about how you deal with problems and if this were at work, it would say a lot about your professionalism. There are five levels of how you can handle a situation like this.

Level one. You see the house on fire and just start running around yelling, “Ahhh! Fire! We need to do something!”

Level two. You grab a couple of buckets, run to the pond and start hauling water back and forth, hoping you can put out the fire.

Level three. You call Nick and Mike from the next house over. You tell them what to bring, where the pond is and what they need to do.

Level four. You tell your younger son to run and call everyone from the neighboring houses. Once they show up, you organize a bucket line from the pond to the burning house. Fire’s out.

Level five. Same as level four, but you also figure out the fire started because of old wiring. You call an electrician to fix it and while they’re there, you ask him ground the roof antennas too.

At level five, you took full responsibility for getting results. But you didn’t do it all alone, you got others involved and set up parallel processes that kept things moving without needing your constant attention. And in the end, you made sure the same problem wouldn’t happen again. What level of fire-fighting skills do you want the people on your team to have?

Takeaways:

Responsibility is split like this: 100% on you and 100% on the other side;
Don’t look for someone to blame, build systems that work better tomorrow than they did today;
To solve problems at level five: set up parallel processes and build systems that keep the problem from coming back.

Immanuel Kant “The Metaphysics of Morals”

Mon, 14 Jul 2025 14:45:00 +0200

What is a “just war”? Why can full-blown democracy be just as terrifying as tyranny? When is it okay to force your will on someone else? Is it possible to criticize a national trait and still be a citizen? Why doesn’t logic always explain everything? And how is the fact that land is limited connected to the rise of laws and the birth of the state?

Innate thoughts and ways of knowing

Kant lived from 1724 to 1804 and is considered one of the founding thinkers of European liberalism. He drew a sharp line between nature and freedom. His work laid the groundwork for the German constitution and helped inspire the liberation movements and liberal values that shaped 18th-century Europe.

In the first part of his life, Kant followed European rationalism. For rationalists, the core idea is innate knowledge, something we’re born with. It’s not learned from experience, not something we invent and definitely not a product of imagination. Their go-to method for figuring things out is deduction.

Here’s a simple example of deduction: the idea of God as something we’re born with. You can’t understand God without first realizing who you are. You see yourself as a limited, uncertain person, someone who doubts and struggles. And if you feel doubt, it means you’re not all-powerful. You can only understand that you’re imperfect if you compare yourself to something perfect – God. Innate ideas aren’t just about logic or strict beliefs. They’re more than that.

Transcendental means a type of knowledge that looks at how we understand things, not the things themselves, but how our mind works when we try to understand them.

Kant’s revolution in Philosophy.

Pre-Kantian philosophy is known as the dogmatic way of thinking. It’s based on the idea that our thoughts or ideas must match reality, that’s how we come to know something. This view sees truth in two ways: as accuracy (matching reality) or as correctness (following certain rules). Correctness – our thoughts are true if they follow the mental rules we use to understand things. So, something is considered real if it fits the way our mind naturally organizes experience. Kant introduced the idea of the a priori – built-in structures in our mind that shape how we experience the world. The a priori lays down the framework for how experience unfolds. For Kant, truth is always tied to possible experience

Before Kant, space was thought of as something the mind creates – a product of thinking. But Kant argued that to even understand space, we already need an inner sense of it. This shows that concepts don’t just come from abstract thinking, they depend on mental structures we already have. Without those, we wouldn’t be able to grasp the concept at all.

In any kind of knowledge, there are two parts: our senses and our understanding. Understanding is then split into the mind and reason. The difference is that the mind works with things we can actually experience, while reason tries to go beyond that.

According to Kant, reason finds in things only what it has already put there to begin with. The unconscious already holds everything within itself, it just gradually uncovers things as experience unfolds.

For Kant, experience always means what we take in through our senses. That’s where the a priori starts to show up. We can only know things if they’re given to us in experience. Any object is really just how the mind puts different parts of experience together into one whole.

It’s the mix of sensations that makes something real. We don’t control what we feel and our mind isn’t the one creating it. You can take what seems like the same thing, break it down, and realize it’s really just a structured set of sensations. That moment when you try to understand an object by focusing on how it feels – that’s as far as reflection can go. Our senses are the passive layer of consciousness.

The categorical imperative is the core of Kant’s ethics.

There’s the realm of actuality and appearances, and then there’s the realm of duty. In the phenomenal world, we’re driven by sensory pleasures. But in the moral world it’s the imperative that rules.

We’re looking at two opposing realms: the domain of physical life – nature and the domain of morality – ethics. And this distinction is absolutely central to Kant. The categorical imperative is the maxim of your will. What matters most is that the principle behind your action could be made universal. That alone has the power to liberate. Because no being should ever act toward another in a way that denies their belonging to the human race – that is, their conscience, their rights and ultimately, their freedom.

And we slip into something less than human when we allow the human in us to be diminished. In other words, if my rights are violated and I don’t stand up for myself, I’m not just letting it happen – I’m disrupting the metaphysical order of the world. I’m committing a moral offense against myself.

Freedom, Right and Morality: Kant’s Triad

Kant’s distinction between morality and right. The essence of being human lies in our freedom. In this sense, right is the meeting point between freedom and nature. By definition, a human being is free. They have the right to full authority over everything that belongs to the realm of nature.

Right concerns only the external and actions or, in Kant’s terms, it doesn’t touch the grounds or motives behind those actions, or the way of thinking that guides them. Right exists solely in the realm of actions. And the moment it starts creeping into the realm of free discussion, into the realm of thought, then, according to Kant, the state can go away. A civil servant, once home, can write whatever they want in a journal, publish it and share it however they want. For example, they might argue that Islam’s influence has a negative effect on their country’s folk traditions, because Islamic music is built on a different tonal structure. And then that same civil servant shows up to work and follows the rules, treating their fellow citizens, including Muslims, with the same respect as anyone else.

Today we live in a world where words are treated as if they were actions. And Kant’s domain of freedom is under attack. The clash of opinions doesn’t belong in the legal realm.

A crime committed out of need is still a crime. Bourgeois law, on the one hand, upholds the principle of equality, on the other, it conceals inequality. The moment law becomes politicized, it starts being applied selectively, based on context. And at that point, what is legal turns into something political. Law still exists, but it starts functioning as an instrument of added force.

There are two Kant’s core principles:

Right – its universality;
Peace – the cultivation of a moral way of thinking.

According to Kant, land becomes property the moment there’s any act of will to claim it, for example, marking off a plot with stakes. Before that, the land belonged to whoever was working it.

On the separation of powers, the impossibility of direct democracy, and the danger of despotism

In Kant’s time, society was still waiting to be freed from the monarch, as republics hadn’t yet taken shape. Kant’s approach to forming a civil community isn’t based on the idea that life will simply get better if people live together. That, however, was the core assumption of classical Enlightenment thinking.

A desire matters simply because it belongs to the will of choice and that’s the domain of freedom. To follow the law is a moral duty. For Kant, right is grounded in personal freedom or in morality. For Hegel, it’s grounded in morality, not in ethics. Morality arises from the freedom of the individual will. Ethics, on the other hand, comes from being embedded in social contexts, shaped by the spirit of your people.

According to Kant, right is the set of conditions under which the will of one person can coexist with the will of another, according to a universal law of nature.

Strict right is based on the idea of external force, the right to mutually require certain actions from one another, but always under the rules of freedom.

The law of freedom means: I have the right to do anything, as long as it doesn’t interfere with anyone else’s freedom. No person can be denied the ability to exercise their freedom, which ultimately includes the right to own property.

Right has no power to establish morality, it’s indifferent to motives. Right doesn’t regulate thought, because thought belongs to the realm of the subjective. From this follow the key principles: freedom of speech, freedom of conscience, freedom of religion, freedom of belief and freedom of the media.

Morality is governed by the categorical imperative – act only according to that principle which could become a universal law. So that no one in this society, including yourself, is excluded from that right. And the first thing you must do is refuse to let anyone treat you in a way that violates your rights.

The right to freedom and how that right gives rise to civil society

I can require someone else to follow the law and by doing that, I’m also requiring them to join civil society. But their personal morality isn’t being controlled. To help a child become a person, we teach them:

To take care of their basic physical needs, like not to soil themselves.
To use reason, like not grabbing a live wire.
And to develop morality, like not poking other people with a screwdriver.

Only then they become a person and truly be free.

Mamardashvili said: “We don’t judge people, we judge actions. Let God judge the person.” The first thing I have an external right to is my body. And that means originally mine is: the place I was born and the work I do.

The basic form of property is the right to land. Every person has a right to their own share of the land, because the land isn’t an endless plain. If it were infinite, we could just spread out forever and never have to interact. But it’s limited and we’re forced into contact and that leads to the creation of civil society.

To “claim land”, I have to mark it in some way, in Roman law, that used to mean working the land. The moment I make that claim, I bind myself to things.

In primitive societies, there’s no trade or exchange, because the best thing is the thing I made for myself. Why would I trade the axe I crafted to fit my own hand for anything else? Every act of exchange feels like a loss, a concession that doesn’t benefit me.

Working the land is one way to mark a claim to it, but just as important is an act of will. My property extends as far as I can maintain control over it. The push toward human interaction starts from a purely material condition, while the concept of property itself is entirely idealistic. The boundary of the original claim is the boundary of force.

The question of property and the state

Within a legal system, we must never ask the question, “Where does this property come from?” As anyone who asks that question is undermining the state, it’s a call to rebellion. In other words, the moment we recognize the rule of law, we have to resist the temptation to challenge someone’s ownership based on how it was acquired in the past. Otherwise, there’s always a “reason to start a war.”

We can speak of different kinds of right:

Natural right – the kind I possess simply because I was born human. The right to freedom, the right to mutual coercion. And this right includes the power to compel those who haven’t yet joined society, to join it.
Private and public.

The second classification is based on the object of the right:

Property rights – over land and money.
Personal rights – the right to use another person’s will, governed by contracts.
Parental authority, the authority of the head of the household and the right in relation to a servant. The idea of the servant can be applied to the hired worker.The relationship with a servant is, at its core, based on freedom, which means it’s based on a contract. But the servant submits their will to that of the master. They don’t act from their own autonomy, and because of that, they fall short of full personhood.

According to Kant, the other -the one in the role of servant -can never be used as a thing. There is a prohibition against exhaustion. Because no one should ever surrender their will entirely.

According to Hegel, the slave is the one who couldn’t stake their life in the struggle. You always have the option to “fall on your sword.” But instead, you choose slow erosion in the face of your mortal enemy. The slave, in becoming a slave, has no illusions about it. And in Hegel’s view, there’s no “middle ground” for servants, there are only persons and things.

Justice, Freedom and the State

Hegel later expands on Kant’s idea, claiming that the state is the construct through which God realizes freedom on earth.

Freedom means the freedom to do whatever I choose. But we have to remember, the land is limited. So eventually, we run into others and interaction becomes inevitable. And this interaction isn’t something we chose, it gives rise to what Kant called “unsociable sociability.” Arguments based on survival alone aren’t enough to justify coming together.

My domain is marked by a sign, working isn’t a necessary marker. I can drive stakes into the ground and declare – this is mine. That right is always provisional. In this sense, nothing can be held permanently. The condition for holding onto something becomes the condition for civilized life and that marks the moment the state begins to emerge.

A family gets a good piece of land, rich and fertile. Over time, the family grows. And under natural right, they might feel they have a fair reason to take land from another family that has fewer children. In a system like this, conflicts will keep happening. If natural right is in charge, there’s no motivation to invest in your land for the long term or to act with a bigger plan in mind. There’s no stable ground for a civilized world, because next year, another family might have a better harvest.

The first act that establishes civil law is ending the condition where everyone is their own judge. You no longer get to be the one who decides what’s just for yourself. The role of determining justice is handed over to something external and that’s the moment the state appears, along with the rule of law and the court.

There are two major attempts by different schools of thought to define the concept of the social contract. The first version (found in Hobbes and Rousseau) says that each person gives up all of their power. In this view, the individual is a product of the sovereign. Citizens are artificial beings and even life itself is handed over. The second version (seen in Locke and Spinoza) holds that each person gives up only part of their power. In this model, individuals retain their natural rights.

From this, two views of the state emerge. In the first model, there is no right to rebellion. But in the second we have not only the right to resist, we have a duty. Because if the sovereign threatens our self-preservation or our conscience, we are obligated to defend them.

We have both private and public right. Private right governs the relationship between two citizens. And with the emergence of the state, I suddenly have a reason to plant trees in my garden, because tomorrow my neighbor won’t be able to take them from me.

The role of the sovereign in the state

At the level of private right, we can identify three types of rights:

Personal right – the ability to direct the actions of others. I can make agreements with people to help with certain tasks.
Property right.
Personal-property right – applying within certain limits: to children, wives and servants. They belong to the household.

Natural relationships are restructured, because the sovereign exists. As a father, you’re obligated to feed your children, even if you’ve stopped loving them. Under natural right, people own unequal amounts of property and that leads to endless conflict. That’s why they enter into a civil contract. And in the end, civil right does two things:

We’re not allowed to question why people started out unequal. Everything that happened before the contract isn’t up for debate. Because when the contract was made, everyone gave up everything. The power given to the sovereign is way bigger than anything you owned.
The state shouldn’t block people from moving into a free society, even if they started out under personal-property relationships. For example, children should be able to inherit what their parents earned. And a servant can be free to stop being a servant. The state doesn’t raise or educate people, it just creates the space for freedom. Raising people isn’t the job of the state.

Public right arises between the state and its citizens. And according to Kant, public right is divided into three parts:

State right – governs the relationship between citizens and the state within a country.
International right – governs the relationships between states.
Cosmopolitan right – governs how we treat individuals from other countries.

The state is the unification of a large number of people under the rule of law. At its core, it’s an act that takes place before the emergence of the sovereign.

The highest authority is the legislative power. The separation of powers is essential, otherwise, despotism will take hold. If a state doesn’t divide power into legislative, judicial and executive branches, then it basically falls back into a state of nature. Without that separation, we end up in a kind of zombie condition. But if all three branches are functioning properly, then you, as a citizen, have something that’s guaranteed to be yours.

According to Kant, direct democracy is impossible, because when the people rule directly, the assembly itself becomes the sovereign. And that same body can end up holding judicial, legislative, and executive power all at once, bringing us right back to the situation where even a democratic state turns into a kind of zombie.

Active and passive citizens

Citizens are divided into active and passive. Active citizens are those who can make independent decisions, because they provide for themselves. They are able to think with their own minds and live according to their own judgment. Those who are not citizens include women, children and servants. A European blacksmith is a citizen. An Indian blacksmith is not. The Indian blacksmith goes from house to house taking orders, in that sense, he functions as a servant. The European blacksmith sells his goods freely. He’s not part of the household and isn’t subject to personal-property law. A factory worker, on the other hand, is not fully independent, because he’s paid a wage.

During the French Revolution, what was being defended, according to Kant, was precisely the definition of the active citizen. The wage worker doesn’t stand on his own and is a passive citizen. But he’s still a citizen, because the state protects him from slavery and helps ensure that contracts are honored.

As you are fully independent, you’re expected to think for yourself and in that sense, the state becomes enlightened. The state’s role is not to stop people from gaining independence or from forming and developing their own judgments. Propaganda, by its nature, reduces freedom, because it assumes I won’t be thinking with my own head. A true citizen wants to be surrounded by other active citizens – people with full freedom. Whether you choose to support a certain view or not, your judgment should be guided by one principle: does this increase freedom or does it diminish it?

A person loses their civil rights when they commit a crime. The law plays an educational role, it shapes a person for entry into society. And the measure of punishment, according to Kant, follows a just principle: “an eye for an eye,” “measure for measure,” – for a life taken, a life in return.

To punish a criminal means placing them in a position of dependence on the state and in that sense, they automatically shift into the status of a thing. They are no longer a party capable of signing their own judgment. They become a functionary, someone who can no longer act or speak fully on their own behalf. The judge signs the sentence for them, because they had already signed the social contract earlier. By punishing the criminal, the state also takes on a responsibility: not to erase them entirely. They cannot be forced to work to the point of despair.

Forms of government and despotism

There are three forms of government: autocracy (rule by one), aristocracy (rule by a few) and democracy (rule by the people). According to Kant, the wrong form of rule is despotism. The opposite of despotism is the republic. But every form of government, no matter which, carries the risk of slipping into despotism.

Kant wouldn’t have been troubled by a state that called itself an autocratic republic. In such a system, there’s a single person who identifies with the sovereign and has the final word, but only within the scope of legislative power, not judicial or executive. At the same time, there’s popular representation that can either limit this person’s legislative decisions or at least point out when those decisions are flawed. This form of government could also be called a constitutional monarchy. In such a system, laws are drafted by parliament and the monarch gives them final approval. So in this way, even a “proper” autocracy, in Kant’s view, is no longer absolute.

When there is capital punishment and a sovereign, the right to grant pardon appears. But in a lawful state, pardon should never be used in cases where one citizen has taken the life of another. The sovereign may exercise clemency only when the crime was committed against the state itself. Pardon, in that case, is meant to express the splendor of sovereign greatness, a gesture of power, showing that the sovereign stands above the law. Kant, however, is more critical. He argues that the sentence of death itself already carries enough of that splendor.

The justice of war and international relations

Once a state has established the kind of internal structure Kant envisions, only then can we begin to consider its relationships with other states – relationships that, at first, exist in a natural state. In essence, states initially stand in a condition of war toward one another.

The basic “proper” approach to war between states is not the destruction of the enemy’s sovereign. Even though we wage war in order to reorganize other people and their state, so that they relate to us differently, according to new principles – our ultimate goal is to reshape relations between states in a way that makes cooperation possible or even the creation of a lasting peace.

It can be justifiable to start a war when a neighbor becomes excessively armed or expands so much that they begin to loom over us. And this kind of “looming” doesn’t have to be military, it could come through excessive control over trade routes.

According to Kant, no war can ever be justified on the grounds of intervening in the internal affairs of another state. Europeans and the West more broadly do not, in principle, seek a despotic world order. That’s not their choice. From a Kant’s perspective, Russia’s current internal structure is fundamentally despotic. And that means the kind of international order Russia proposes cannot, in its essence, be accepted, because what will be reproduced through Russia’s model? A replication of despotism. What gets multiplied is a system where power is concentrated, freedom is secondary and law serves authority rather than the individual.

In waging war, it cannot be punitive, because you are not the authority that decides justice. You are not the sovereign over others. You cannot absorb a people “into yourself” or turn their lands into colonies.

During war, you cannot plunder the people, because they are private citizens. Even reparations must come with a receipt, a formal acknowledgment. There must be a ban on partisan fighters,
because fighting them means killing the people themselves. Partisans, by definition, act outside the authority of the state and they may not stop fighting even after peace is signed. Only the army should take part in war.

A just war can be initiated in three cases:

A direct threat to the existence of our state.
A threat to our civil existence, when the very foundation of law is being undermined.
When the possibility of establishing perpetual peace is blocked, for example, through despotic relations between states.

Why is it so hard to change and what helps us build new habits?

Fri, 17 Jan 2025 06:46:00 +0200

Here’s how I see the whole change process. What it really takes to build new habits. What gets in the way and makes them hard to stick. Why emotions play such a big role. And who can help you change.

People don’t do what’s best for them, they do what they’re used to

Most of the time people react to things on autopilot. They just go with whatever feels most familiar. And if you ask someone why they did something, their answer will usually be automatic too. You’ll get a made-up logical explanation, something that sounds reasonable and makes sense. That’s the brain kicking in with a justification or a “safe” explanation.

The brain’s job is basically to come up with a logical answer. To keep you doing what you’ve always done and stop you from trying anything new. The brain believes one thing above all: “New equals risky. If I stick to what I’ve done before, I’ll survive.”

The foundation of real change is an “uncomfortable ” explanation of your behavior.

Any event can be explained in two ways: the “safe” or “uncomfortable ” one. If someone reacts automatically, the brain will jump in and explain why what they did was actually the best thing for them. That kind of explanation is what I call a “safe” explanation.

That kind of explanation justifies the automatic reaction. And here’s the trap, you think it was your own choice. But really, it was just your autopilot kicking in again. The brain goes, “You did everything right. That wasn’t automatic, that was thoughtful, intentional, totally your decision. What you did fits who you are. Even if you had more time to think it through, you’d still choose the exact same thing.”

To start becoming more self-aware, you’ve got to look for the uncomfortable explanation of your behavior. That means asking: why might the way I acted not be the best for me? Don’t just go with the first answer your brain gives you. Of course the “safe” explanation feels better, it says you did the right thing, made a smart choice and did what’s best for you. That kind of thinking saves energy, because then you don’t need to change anything. And your brain avoids the risk of trying something new.

The uncomfortable explanation does the opposite, it makes you slow down, think and reflect. What if your automatic reaction isn’t actually helpful, but harmful? The truth is, when we first formed those reactions, we didn’t really have time to consciously choose from all the options. We just went with whatever came up first. And there it became a habit.

Just because you learn to see the uncomfortable explanation doesn’t mean it’s the only true one. But it gives you something important – a choice. You get a moment where you can consciously decide whether to keep your reaction or change it.

Examples of “safe” and “uncomfortable ” behavior:

The first example.
I’ve hired several people for lead roles at our company. A few of those hires didn’t work out, we ended up parting ways after just a couple of months.

“safe” explanation: It’s better to promote people who’ve already been with the company for a while. I trust them more and they already understand how things work internally.

“uncomfortable ” explanation: I’m afraid someone in the company might be more experienced than me. I avoid competition, so I end up pushing away strong candidates on purpose.

The second example.
A. dreams of launching a finance project in the US market. But instead, he’s been living in Moscow and working at a big consulting firm for the past seven years.

“safe” explanation: to take a risk and start something in the US, I need to build up some capital first, A. says. Plus, he’s climbing the career ladder and a partnership at his firm is already on the horizon.

Noticing the real reasons behind your usual behavior can be uncomfortable. Especially when you’ve spent years justifying your choices to yourself and others with “safe” explanations.

“uncomfortable ” explanation: A. is afraid to take responsibility for something new. He’s worried he might fail. Deep down, he’s not even sure he really wants it. His current situation is convenient, no need to risk anything or take real ownership. He can keep telling people he’s a future entrepreneur, not just another corporate guy. He gets to scroll through TechCrunch, share fintech news with coworkers and look like he’s “in the game” without actually doing anything.

The third example:
During his wife’s pregnancy, F. realized he didn’t love her and decided to leave the family. F. believes that society puts too much pressure on the idea of family.

“safe” explanation: F. expected his wife to keep growing professionally during her pregnancy. He wanted her to stay curious and passionate about things the same way he is. She didn’t really engage in conversations about his work or laugh at his jokes, that created distance between them.

“uncomfortable ” explanation: F. isn’t that interested in his own work. So when he tried to share his thoughts about it, his wife didn’t respond the way he hoped, not because she didn’t care, but because he couldn’t express it in a way that sparked real connection. On top of that, he was scared of the responsibility of becoming a father. So he started focusing on everything that was “wrong” in the relationship as a way to justify leaving.

Why do people change at all?

For real change to happen, a person has to see where their habits are actually taking them long-term. They have to realize that if they don’t shift that trend, it’s a dead end.Literally. They’ll live less and feel less alive.

The same mechanism that once helped a person survive is what keeps them from seeing their own trend. The same mechanism that once helped a person survive is now what stops them from seeing their own trend. It’s the thing that helps us form habits and protects us from trying new, risky reactions. But it also blocks us from seeing where those habits are really taking us over time.

As we go through life, we actually get signals telling us it’s time to shift the trend. Some are emotional signals like loneliness, apathy, low moods that won’t go away, anger or a deep sense of emptiness. Others come from the outside, struggling to build real connections with family or friends, failed projects, hobbies that just don’t bring joy anymore. If someone ignores these signals for too long, the body can start speaking up too, like back pain from carrying too much responsibility. The signals show up through people around you: family, friends, partners, and through the simple fact that things just aren’t working.

A – a shorter, less fulfilling life. B – what’s possible if you manage to catch the trend early.

Noticing the trend is uncomfortable, especially if you’ve spent years justifying your behavior to yourself and others with “safe” explanations. Admitting there’s an uncomfortable reason behind it means facing the fact that you haven’t been living in the best way. And once you admit that, you’re faced with the need to change. That’s scary. It takes a lot of energy and real courage to actually start changing.

The uncomfortable explanation usually comes from people who actually care about you, like family, close friends or a therapist. A therapist is often the better option in these conversations because they don’t have hidden agendas, unlike loved ones, whose personal motives you also have to consider. People outside your inner circle usually won’t give you that kind of feedback, it’s risky. They know it could lead to pushback, anger, defensiveness or even hostility.

To notice your own trend and change, you need three things:

The ability to give uncomfortable explanation for your behavior;
The skill to recognize your own emotions;
And the courage to take actions.

Being able to recognize your emotions helps you figure out what kind of life really works for you. Emotions come from the unconscious. And the unconscious has two parts: your personal one, shaped by your own experience, and the collective one, shaped by everything past generations went through. Those before us already learned what kind of life helps us survive. Your personal unconscious carries a deep need for love. So at the core, we’re all driven by two things: the need to stay alive and the need to be loved. That’s why therapists often ask people to focus on their feelings as emotions help you find your way through life.

Courage is what helps you actually integrate the experience. You often hear people say, “I get it, but I still can’t do anything about it.” That’s because there’s a gap between understanding and integration and to close it, you need new experiences. You have to start acting differently. Only then can the brain see that there are other possible outcomes besides the automatic reaction it’s used to. To do that, you need to go through three steps:

Step one is when the brain understands. At this stage, you’ve heard enough uncomfortable explanations to see your old patterns clearly.

Step two is when the brain starts to believe. To believe, it needs new experience, you have to act differently and break out of your usual habits.

Step three is when the brain integrates it. Now it starts creating new explanations, why the new way is actually better than the old one.

Conclusion
Most of what we do in life is just automatic reactions. The brain sticks to what’s familiar and backs it up with “safe” explanations to keep us from changing. Most of the time, people don’t do what’s best for them, they do what they’re used to. Real change only happens when a person realizes that if they don’t change, it’s a dead end.

To change, you need three things:

The ability to see the uncomfortable truth behind your behavior;
The skill to understand your own emotions;
The courage to integrate new experiences.

Как Олег Тиньков помог мне бизнес стартануть в 2009 году

Sat, 08 Jun 2024 19:11:08 +0200

В связи с грустным ребрендингом банка Тинькова, решил рассказать историю того, как Олег Тиньков помог мне запустить первый бизнес в 2009 году. Это история не про то, как он вдохновил, а как действительно помог.

Ещё в школе я увлекся дизайном и с 1 курса пошел работать в дизайн-студиях Санкт-Петербурга. Тогда же Олег Тиньков начал снимать бизнес-секреты. В них он брал интервью у разных предпринимателей из его окружения. Помню, как взахлеб пересматривал его интервью. И в тот момент он для меня был ролевой моделью — этакая смесь рок-н-ролла, энергии, здорового и задорного маркетинга проектов.

В начале 3 курса, в 2009 году, случился очередной кризис в России, и у бизнесов стало резко меньше денег. Тогда я работал внутри компании в направлении «дорогих» сайтов. Не шаблонных быстрых решений, а именно кастомных разработок, где мы долго общались с клиентом, а не заполняли универсальные брифы, выдавая трафаретные результаты. В момент начала кризиса руководитель дизайн-студии сказал, что пришло время делать стандартные решения на конвейере. Я со своим двадцатилетним максималистским подходом отказался и был уволен, конечно, вполне справедливо.

После увольнения, пришел к родителям и сказал, что мне надо бросить универ и срочнейше поступать на кафедру дизайна в Лондоне, так как больше мне в СПб расти негде. Они вполне резонно сказали, чтобы я не страдал фигней, и, конечно, отказали.

Подумав ещё разок, я решил, что все же неплохо было бы получить диплом. Так как меня только что уволили из лучшей студии в городе, то ничего не оставалось, как открыть собственную компанию по брендингу (конечно же). Мы объединились с менеджером проектов из прошлой компании, и принялись работать над нашим сайтом. Работали у него дома, придумывая название компании, звоня в другие дизайн-студии, чтобы лучше понять процесс их работы, и рисуя выдуманные проекты, чтобы заполнить портфолио. Студию назвали — agrrr.com. Почта у нас называлась — emc2@agrrr.com. А фавикон на сайте был буквально иконой Иисуса. Ведь в слове фавикон четко прослеживается слово икона.

В процессе подготовки мы поняли, что серьёзная компания не может быть без офиса, и поэтому сняли помещение в складском комплексе за 6 000 рублей, 15 кв. м, в самых недрах промышленной зоны. В соседнем от нас помещении ночевало 50 мигрантов, работающих на стройке, а туалет был непригоден даже для мух — они мерли там от ужасного вида и вони.

13 февраля 2010 года мы запустили наш сайт, и я написал письмо Олегу Тинькову, который тогда был на пике популярности в ЖЖ. ЖЖ — блог платформа, по сути предшественник текущих социальных сетей. Письмо было следующего содержания:

Олег, привет!

Нам не нужны твои деньги. Но сегодня мы запустили компанию, которая занимается брендингом — AGRRR.com Если ты хочешь реально помочь начинающим предпринимателям, размести это письмо у себя в ЖЖ.

Олег его разместил, сказал, что даже сайт не посмотрел, просто решил помочь ребятам. Лучше рекламы для нас на следующий день после запуска сайта придумать было нельзя. По сегодняшним меркам, это если бы Тейлор Свифт разрешила нашей группе образованной вчера сыграть на ее разогреве. Успех и тысячи посетителей на сайте.

Мы начали получать заявки от клиентов, которые приходили с ЖЖ Олега. Одно из предложений было — участие в тендере от компании Мирель, крупнейшего производителя кондитерских изделий на Урале. В тендере мы победили и заключили контракт на космическую для нас сумму в 1,2 млн. Моя зарплата в предыдущей компании была что-то около 30 тыс.

На момент победы в тендере у нас даже компания зарегистрирована не была. И мы начали работать, не получив предоплаты. Чтобы зарегистрировать компанию и полететь в командировку в Челябинск до первых оплат от клиента, я занял у мамы 50 тысяч рублей на билеты.

Некоторые работы которые мы успели сделать в Agrrr

Потом были: проверка службой безопасности (они не поняли, почему компания была создана в день подписания договора), командировки в Челябинск, лекции про тонкости рецептов тортов, 30 часов записи интервью с главными людьми на производстве, дорогой офис на 60 метров (а как же), первые сотрудники, конечно, бухгалтер на полный день, по совместительству сестра партнера (ведь компании из 5 человек нужен учет). Брендинговое агентство просуществовало 1 год, а потом я занялся уже другими проектами.

Без Олега Тинькова у нас бы никогда не вышло так взлететь на старте. Но главное, сигнал поддержки, акт одобрения и веры в предпринимательское начало, в текущих проектах импульс продолжается проявляться и в сегодняшних проектах. Думаю, мало кто сделал столько же для становления предпринимателей, которым сейчас 30-40 лет как Олег.

Олег, спасибо, ты класс!